[In] "The Wide House" Miss Caldwell has begun to question her formula. She has discovered that "a man might find some kindliness ∗ ∗ ∗ in men who were avowedly rascals ∗ ∗ ∗ and find nothing but mercilessness ∗ ∗ ∗ in those who had the approval of God." But though she has given the matter some thought, her old habits persist.
When the curtain rises on the buzzing young town of Grandeville, N.Y., in the Eighteen Fifties, we meet in Stuart Coleman the robust, full-blooded hero of costume drama. A rebellious Irishman with a weakness for women, he deviates from type in his passionate love for a house. Though only a small shopkeeper, he has built himself a great white castle that stands in marked contrast to the ugly dark buildings around him. For a reason which we learn much later, "he would fight to death for it ∗ ∗ ∗. In an odd way it had so completed him that he felt no need for any woman to share it with him." But when his rich, widowed cousin, the cruel and ugly Janie Cauder, arrives with her four children, Stuart wastes no time in making her his mistress and in gaining control of her wealth to marry the daughter of his worst enemy.
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