Books: Endless Flow

THE HARD BLUE SKY (466 pp.)—Shirley Ann Grau—Knopf ($5).

Shirley Ann Grau's first book of short stories, The Black Prince (TIME, Jan. 24, 1955), was so good that many readers have been impatiently waiting for the first of the "even dozen" novels she hoped to write. But having written the first one, she discarded it. The Hard Blue Sky is her second, and while it is not for the wastebasket, it is additional proof that Author Grau is a born short-story writer. She could make the ordinary Negroes and whites of The Black Prince seem special and even important. But in nearly...