[Taylor Caldwell's Bright Flows the River] is anti-establishment, anti-feminist, anti-democracy, anti-family, anti-power, anti-duty, and in fact anti almost everything save the right and the need of the individual to make the correct choice and philosophy of a way of life that is not counter to his very basic, personal tenets. Caldwell's prose is, most of the time, majestic and almost poetic. The characters, mostly men and four or five of the women, who she has peopled this—her thirty-second book—with, though not realistic or believable to me, are indeed unique.

The plot of the book itself is fascinating and easy to follow. Guy Jerald is a man who has gone after the American Dream of rags to riches and has triumphed. He has taken 900 acres of barren and almost worthless farmland and has built an empire. But is triumph success? Jerald, a man one would think has...