Books: You Can't Go Home Again

A PRIDE OF LIONS (308 pp.)—John Brooks—Harper ($3.50).

At 30, with a good job in a Manhattan publisher's office and the love of a fine girl, Tom Osborne learned a truth that has plagued many a small-towner: a young fellow may walk out on home, family and background, but that does not necessarily get them out of his system.

Tom returns to his home town for a week or so to help the old folks get the house repaired. Novelist Brooks uses this slender and unpromising pretext to merge past and present in a way that would make that old master of the...