It is strange, but desperately appropriate in these bitter days, to open a novel upon no heroine, no hero, and no peculiar personal problem. To find rather upon the beginning pages the sweep of continental movement, peoples—not people—on the march—a march not made voluntarily towards some desired goal but forced on before brutality, disaster, and extinction. ["The Trespassers"] starts clearly with the broader theme. The story, intense, embattled, and sharply individualized, is swept forward on the implacable wave of the present….

[Vera Marriner] is lovely to look at, smart, and finished with gloss of the cover girl but with personality and character to take the curse off that; she is shrewd and firm in business but generous, extravagant, and altruistic outside it. She illogically demands a logical righting of wrongs in a world given over to irrationality.

And Jasper Crown! Here is a character destined...