Books: Pastoral Symphony

THE FAIR FIELD (240 pp.)—John Moore—Simon & Schusfer ($2.75).

In 1944, British Navy flyer John Moore lay in a Normandy field and watched ancient buildings in the town of Caen go up in flames. Near by, a Norman farmer, cursing quietly and steadily, was extracting a bomb splinter from a cow's hindquarters. But for the accident of the English Channel, Moore reflected, this scene might have been laid in his own birthplace—the once-Norman market town of Elmbury, near Stratford on Avon.

The Fair Field is John Moore's way of putting Elmbury on the map...