[Richter's work] is all of a piece, for his one theme has been the American past. His aim, he has said, has been "not to write historical novels but to give an authentic sensation of life in early America." This he has been remarkably successful in doing, both because he has been a careful student of the relevant documents and because he has a deep sympathy with the life of earlier times. Although his books have often been popular, he has never written down to the masses. He has gone his own way, and he has no reason to regret it.

Since he has written so often about frontier life, Richter has had occasion to show why many settlers feared and hated the Indians. But in 1953, with The Light in the Forest, he deliberately took the point of view of the Indians, and found an ingenious way of...