Set on the Ohio frontier in the 1880s, [Leafy Rivers] is largely an extended flashback in the mind of Mary Pratt Converse Rivers….

This is Miss West's tenth book, and it is nothing if not professional. It's "professional" in a bad sense too for she strains to tie up loose threads in a tidy ending. Not only does Leafy mature; her parents realize their failures, while her older brother, an unconvincing character, finds his vocation as a preacher and wins his bride. Even the obstetrician, whose first wife died in childbirth, faces a crisis.

The backwoodsiness is occasionally forced, with frequent use of words like "dauncy" ("donsie," i.e., sick) and "work-brickel" ("workbrittle," i.e., industrious). Yet much of the book's charm is due to the frontier setting, without which Leafy Rivers would be rather lackluster.

Joan Joffe Hall, "Backwoods Schooling," in Saturday Review (copyright © 1964 by Saturday Review...