Miss Forbes is in love with New England, and ["Rainbow on the Road"] is her confession and her declaration. It is, to be sure, about New England of a century ago, but much of it is familiar, both the appearance and the character. This view of New England is a welcome change from current fashion—early autumns or desire under the elms or last puritans or George Apleys—and it is a long time since we have had a book that delighted in the granite ledges and the noisy brooks and the little white villages and the flavor of the villages….

"Rainbow on the Road" is a picaresque novel. As with most picaresque novels, the story itself is not very important….

Ruby Lambkin comes to dominate the book, though not wholly. If Miss Forbes owes little to Freud, she owes much to Hawthorne, and this is a sort...