Books: Lineman

SLIM—William Wister Haines—Little, Brown ($2.50).

This is the story of a hillbilly boy from the South who makes good as an electrical worker during the boom years. His domain was the wide world outside any Pullman window—a world across which marches mile on mile of high-tension wire, sagging between skeleton towers.

Author Haines knows whereof he is writing. Though only 25, he has spent seven years as a lineman on power highways and electrical railroads. But in celebrating his craft and the men who pursue it, he has not overlooked the fact that novel writing...