SOURCE: Steinberg, Sybil. Review of The Fierce Dispute, by Helen Hooven Santmyer. Publishers Weekly 232 (9 October 1987): 79.

In the following brief review, Steinberg gives an unfavorable assessment of Santmyer's second novel The Fierce Dispute.

The success of “… And Ladies of the Club” has prompted reissue of the author's earlier works. [The Fierce Dispute], her second, was originally published in 1929—and the years have not been kind. Dated in form and content, it is what was once called a “woman's book,” but a contemporary audience will find its simple sentimentality tame. In the Ohio town familiar to readers of Santmyer's other works, a genteel matriarchy lives in a once magnificent, now dilapidated family manse behind a locked iron gate. The trio, consisting of the disapproving grandmother, Mrs. Baird, her shamed daughter Hilary and granddaughter Lucy Anne, live cut off from the rest of the community. The tension between mother and daughter...