Veteran author Laura Hobson has [in Untold Millions] another novel with a message: sometimes we must pay a great price for something. The particular thing this time is maturity…. Laura Hobson paints a multi-dimensional word-portrait of one child helping another child, one who learns a great deal from the experience, and one who is left behind. She leaps with ease from Jossie's thoughts to those of Rick, either by allowing us to peek into their innermost selves, or through Jossie's journal, in which we see her gradual rise to emotional adulthood. Indeed, the truth can make you free, she learns.

The book imparts the flavor of the Twenties, the days of Gershwin and Whiteman, of Lunt and Fontanne, without overdoing it; the book is not a "period piece." There have always been, and there will always be, those who grow, and those who merely grow older.

Eleanor P...