Books: The End of Kentucky

FORETASTE OF GLORY—Jesse Stuart—Dutton ($2.50).

Cried a woman: "Thar's a burnin' mountain in the sky. Hit looks like a hillside on fire when ye burn a clearin' in the spring."

Cried the Reverend John Whetstone: "It's only an aurora borealis." But most people in the Kentucky mountain town of Blakesburg were terrified. They had never seen or heard of an aurora borealis. Mountain-born and Bible-bred, they thought that the apocalyptic spasms of light which possessed their night sky meant the End of Time. They acted accordingly.

They opened the jail. "Hit's a hell of a...