Books: Mose of Mississippi

DEEP DARK RIVER—Robert Rylee—Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

Though many a reader has lately grown weary of tales of the South by Southern writers, the Book-of-the-Month Club nevertheless turned once more to that region, picked Deep Dark River as its July choice. On the strength of this, his first novel, critics carefully pigeonholed the name of Robert Rylee as a young U. S. novelist to bear serious watching.

Deep Dark River begins when Mary Winston, well-born Southern lady, only woman lawyer in Clarksville, Miss., accepts a routine case growing out of a shyster lawyer's...