Books: Colonial Adulteress

THE GENERAL’S LADY—Esther Forbes— Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

Esther Forbes’s four novels (O Genteel Lady!, Paradise, etc.) have been full of romantic literary tricks. In spite of this they have been eminently successful in drawing a persuasive picture of colonial New England. Descended from pioneer Massachusetts stock, saturated from childhood with tales of colonial history told by her parents, both ardent historians, Author Forbes has a liking for portraying warm-blooded New England women whose passions clashed with Puritan convention.

The General’s Lady, a sort of colonial version of the Judd Gray-Ruth Snyder case, tells the story of a beautiful, vainglorious Tory adulteress, Morganna Bale, wife of a middleaged, good-natured Continental general. In the last year of the Revolution, when the story begins, Morganna acquires two worshipful protégés, a pretty farm girl and a handsome British deserter. When she falls in love with the deserter, he takes fright at her reckless passion, tries to escape. Promptly retrieved, he resists no further. Two months later, the war ended, he is so hypnotized that he agrees to murder the returning general. By a rather far-fetched accident, the general technically commits suicide, but under circumstances which, even if believed, would in those days have failed to save even a beautiful defendant. The piling up of circumstantial evidence brings the lovers to trial. After a false confession which saves her weak-kneed lover’s neck, Morganna pays the Devil his wages and goes bravely to the scaffold.