["The Friendly Persuasion"] is a book of short stories with a difference, no flavor of pop or hard liquor. Discovering the Birdwells … is like discovering some new wine with a fine bouquet, very restorative and most beguiling. One story leads to another, and who would want a knockout novel to take one's mind off the present and the future when in these sips one sees so clearly that some things last forever and are both good and giddy?

Not for a long time has a little book scored on so many points. None of the characters, not one, is a puppet. The writing is now like the running of a brook and now like the stillness of a forest pool. Miss West's style is full of surprises, vivid metaphors, odd turns of plot, yet she is never disconcerting, over-ingenious or repetitive. Though distilled from family legends of the...