Pioneer life in Wisconsin, as August Derleth writes of it, takes on the serenity of rural New England. The perils and heroism and general surcharge of drama that readers … have long associated with the winning of the West are oddly veiled by the bland scenes and situations of ["Restless Is the River"]. The whole surge and sound of immigrant life appear muffled, and in many pages there is no sound whatever. It may very well be argued that Mr. Derleth's naturalism is nearer to the truth than either the heady romance or the bleak realistic novel on the same subject, but his careful skirting of emotional conflicts and crises leaves a work of good intention with only a sheep-grazing excitement.
The central situation tells of the Hungarian Count Augustin Brogmar, whose liberal sentiments made it necessary for him to flee to America to escape Metternich, and Brogmar's wife, Eleanor, who fled with him and was never able to adjust herself to a new wilderness life. This is a situation familiar to fiction and interesting only in so far as some freshness and new insight are brought to bear upon it. The Countess Brogmar is created in a monotone pattern wherein we are told that the crude life of Wisconsin in the 1840's makes her yearn for the elegance of her past, but her homesickness is so evident from the beginning and continues with so much repetition of incident—it would be distressing to enumerate how many times she sits brooding before the portraits of her patrician relatives—that her death stands out as a somewhat welcome moment….
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