SOURCE: A review of The Dark Cloud, in The Dial, Vol. 79, July, 1925, p. 77.

In the following review, the critic finds The Dark Cloud to be an interesting and picturesque “prose panorama.”

The Dark Cloud, by Thomas Boyd, projects a picture of life with camera sharpness, and yet the outlines of it have been so softened by tones of understanding that the effect is in no sense photographic. Mr Boyd has sought and successfully recaptured the picturesque background of early steamboat days along the Mississippi; he has written a narrative of incident rather than of sustained plot, done in flexible and vigorous prose. It is chiefly interesting as a prose panorama, sweeping from Quebec to Detroit, across to Cincinnati, and down the great waterway as it was in the enthralling fifties of the last century.