[The] dominant theme of "The Trespassers" is not Vera's and Jasper's affair—though that, sometimes piercingly sweet, sometimes painfully, jarringly troubled and tragic, generally carried the melody and provides the emotional suspense—but rather the unique and greatest tragedy of our times: the huge migrations of the '30s and '40s [by] … millions of pitiful ones, whose chief crime has been that, for reasons of faith or race or political belief, they have been counted out in the ridiculous eeney-meaney-miney-moe of totalitarian ambitions….

It is a tribute to Miss Hobson's gifts as a novelist that she is able to carry with a high hand into her story, and yet sustain its suspense, the kind of complicated detail and repeated deferment that make the heart sick and—all too often—kill the gentle reader's interest. Part of her success arises from the fact that she very convincingly and...