This latest in the long series of Sac Prairie stories ["The Shield of the Valiant"] will add little to the reputation of Wisconsin's most noted regional novelist. The book needs tightening and pruning; the many narrative threads, each interesting in itself, are not skilfully woven into a fabric and pattern of meaning and general interest. The episodic form of the novel lures the author into verbose byways of almost irrelevant anecdote and frequent paragraphs of tedious moralizing. Many tried-and-safe ingredients of popular fiction are here: the banker's son falls in love with a brash but pure girl on the other side of the tracks; the liberal son is at odds with his stuffy, reactionary father; malicious village gossip is the motive power that turns the wheels of the plot; the tolerant, tobacco-loving, Going-My-Way sort of priest is contrasted with the bigoted cleric more Catholic than Christian; there are fights, adultery, and suicides, and brave deeds of the few men of good will in the community. The Gordian knot of indecisions and confusions is cut sharply by Pearl Harbor, a useful deus ex machina to end more than one recent novel.
Derleth's faithful readers will find his good things here, too: his keen knowledge of village and country life, his affectionate descriptions of the Wisconsin River and Valley, the pleasant reappearance of such old friends as Steve Grendon. Many will find, however, the over-all impression of the novel depressing; there is a triviality about Sac Prairie in our time that contrasts with the vigorous and heady life of the community in earlier days.
Richard A. Cordell, "Sac Prairie Again," in The Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. XXVIII, No. 45, November 10, 1945, p. 43.
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