Quality Not Quantity

TACEY CROMWELL--Conrad Richter-- Knopf ($2).

Author Conrad Richter (The Trees') has already published one novel about the Southwest (The Sea of Grass). The setting of his brief new novel is Arizona in the early 1900s.

Youngster Nugget sneaks away from his horrible home in Kansas and hitch-hikes in search of his half brother, Gaye Oldaker. He finds Gaye running the roulette wheel in a New Mexico "sporting house" filled with painted ladies whose names are strange to him--Midnight Rose, Drowsy Dolly, Fleabitten Daisy, Rowdy Kate. Gaye Oldaker's lady friend, Tacey Cromwell, runs the establishment. But after Nugget turns up Tacey moves to the copper town of Bisbee, Ariz., where she hopes to leave her "sporting" life behind her, to marry Gaye and make a home for Nugget. The family circle is completed when a miner is killed and his wildcat daughter, Seely, is taken in by Tacey.

But Gaye Oldaker cannot bring himself to marry ex-Madam Tacey. When the respectable ladies of Bisbee discover Tacey's history and unmarried status, they furiously confiscate Nugget and Seely, settle them in respectable Bisbee homes. Lover Gaye is too weak to fight for his "family," too ambitious not to rise to the top in Arizona politics once he has discarded the unpopular Tacey. The ironic result of the family split is that young Seely suffers torments in the strange hands of "nice" people, grows up to be virtually a high-class prostitute. At the end of the book Nugget, Seely, Gaye and Tacey are reunited, but they are all so changed that it is doubtful whether the wounds of separation can ever be healed.

In the hands of a hack this plot could be a sentimental monster. But Author Richter handles it deftly, intelligently, against an effective regional background. His studies of children are acute and true. The town of Bisbee, filled with miners from Cornwall, Ireland, Mexico, Sweden, Central Europe, is as lively as a good Western. The passing of the years in mine and home is pictured in clean, brief prose. The writers of 1,000-page epics look pretty paunchy beside Author Richter and his tight, effective 208-page book.

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