Here [in "Leafy Rivers"], for an invigorating change in the contemporary novel's tormented pace, is a breezy tale about earlier young Americans changing the world.

They literally constitute an avant-garde, rural division. They are pioneers of a westward-wandering era…. Yet the story of Leafy Rivers, who is the heroine of Miss West's best novel, has a timelessness of its own. For Leafy, not yet 21, marries one man, yearns for another, and is briefly the passion-spending captive of a third.

That's the core of the matter. In Miss West's narrative the suspense is excellently taut. And along the way we share a turbulent interval of the American past….

One of those weather-assisted seduction scenes [is included]. With no premeditation, Leafy comes out of a great drenching storm into an accomplished young philanderer's fine big covered wagon. It serves as traditionally as a cave, a hunting lodge, a beach house...