Can sincerity save a badly written book from being dreadful? Sometimes, but not always. [In Small Town], Wilson's obvious earnestness only intensifies the embarrassment of his most mawkish exploration of male menopause. Divorced photographer Ben Winslow comes back to his Vermont hometown from the empty singles life in California—and finds that his alienated teenage son Ebon has been taken in by a farmhouseful of obliging women…. Soon Ben is part of this extended family…. One wants to like this heart-on-sleeve novel, but the hopeless dialogue, toneless prose, and daytime-soap plotting make that a sad impossibility. (pp. 901-02)

A review of "Small Town," in Kirkus Reviews, Vol. XLVI, No. 16, August 15, 1978, pp. 901-02.