Research & Romance

THE FORBIDDEN GROUND--Neil H. Swanson--Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

If contemporary U. S. historical romances were priced according to the research expended in giving them authentic backgrounds, they would cost a fortune. Kenneth Roberts, in writing a book like Northwest Passage, requires "upward to three tons of assorted reference books," goes to incredible lengths to determine whether, for example, the moon was or was not shining in some wilderness outpost on a certain night 150 years ago. But when he comes to write his narrative, long stretches of it are merely spurious love story, no better than Robert W. Chambers, his literary equal, might have written with no reference books at all.

The latest example of wasteful research is The Forbidden Ground, a Revolutionary War romance against a background of the Minnesota frontier. Author Swanson (The Judas Tree, The First Rebel), insofar as his hard job permits (he is assistant managing editor of the Baltimore Evening Sun), is as fussy about background facts as Kenneth Roberts. Preparatory to writing The Forbidden Ground he read countless volumes on the Northwest fur trade, spent many a summer retracing the old fur trade routes. Brimming with this history, he then wrote a frontier love story, using his rich background material as sparingly as though it were holy water.

Designed to give the reader 28 breathing spells, one at the end of each chapter, the plot is necessarily complex. The characters, as in most such books, do not grow; they only move fast. On page one, fine-boned, redheaded Fur Trader Baril MacGregor is a loyal British subject, his attention wholly centred on an elusive "apricot silk" blonde named Merrily, belle of the Detroit trading post. The important thing about him is that he has a way with women, and is doomed by MacGregor legend to lose the woman he really loves. On page 148, nine breathing spells later, an innocent victim of a crooked British governor and big fur trader, he is headed north, a fugitive, with a daring plan to wreck the British fur business, decoy the troops away from Detroit. With him is a cool-headed rebel girl named Sarah, whom he rescued from a British firing squad.

Although few couples in fiction have gone through so many vicissitudes together, their last adventure is like nothing going. Surprised by the British, Sarah escapes with broken arms, Baril with both legs shot through. Not only do they survive and escape; in addition they capture a fort, finish off the biggest British fur trader, capture the general staff of a British garrison. After so much accomplished with only one pair of arms & legs between them, the reader can only wonder with awe what they will be able to do when their wounds really heal.

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