Winning Warings

DUSK AT THE GROVE--Samuel Rogers --Little, Brown ($2.50). Books that win fat prizes generally get a big circulation, but not always the acclaim of critics. There should be little complaint, however, with the judges who picked Dusk at The Grove for this year's $10,000 Atlantic Prize Contest. The still waters of this quiet novel run deep. Author Rogers deals sparingly with what his people do, more with what they say, most with what they think. Ranging from 1909 to 1931 in a series of episodes, the story takes for its theme family loyalty in a changing world. Among the Warings all the black sheep are in-laws.

When the tale opens, the whole family is on a train, bound for "The Grove," their summer home in Rhode Island. Mark Waring is an Episcopal minister, tolerant but troubled. Luly, his wife, is "a saint, but without the unpleasant qualities that so often go with saintliness." Their children are Brad, 15, serious, dependable; Linda, volatile and imaginative; Dicky. funny-faced child who asks, "Papa, is a snapping turtle a mammal or an insect?" and "What State are we in now?"

Nineteen-nineteen brings a great gathering of the Warings at The Grove. Dicky and Brad are back from the War. Linda, now 21, rejects Thornton, her War fiance, then weakens and accepts him. Brad reluctantly decides to give up medicine for business. Dicky involves himself with Ellen, a neurotic. Best friend Joel who has always loved Linda looks on helplessly.

The intrusion of outsiders into the charmed circle of the Warings produces unhappiness and tragedy. Ellen, on the borderline of insanity, drives Dicky from drink to suicide. The placid, shallow Thornton cannot hold the love of Linda, most colorful member of the family, who turns to Joel, wavers between him and her small son, finally decides to divorce Thornton. Luly, mother and grandmother, dies. When in 1931 Mark Waring decides to sell The Grove for what it will fetch in bad times to save Brad, no one objects. Its day and its kind of hospitality are over.

The Author. Tall, thin, gentle Samuel Rogers looks like a benevolent but eager bird. He was born in 1894, son of an Episcopal clergyman, eldest of four brothers, all of whom bring their wives and children every summer they can to the old family home at Middletown, R. I. Middletowners will recognize the scenery in Dusk at The Grove, may think they can identify some members of the Rogers clan. Prize-winner Rogers graduated from Browrn, took his master's degree at the University of Chicago, drove an ambulance in France. In 1919 he married and went to teach at the University of Wisconsin. "After a year of correcting freshman themes," he says, "I sought refuge in the French department." After two years at the Sorbonne, he returned to Wisconsin, where he is now associate professor.

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