Books: Ase's Agonies

THE SOJOURNER (327 pp.)—Mor/or/e Kinnan Rowlings—Scrlbner ($3.50).

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings might well have called her latest novel "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." Her farmer hero, Ase Linden, is a rawboned, ungainly man of probity without a mean bone in his 6 ft. 4 in. body. Born in a log cabin in the 18605, Ase dies in the age of flight, but his sad saga never gets off the ground.

Ase's big trouble is a plague of human locusts. His mother squeezes out the juices of her love for his dashing, rakehell brother Ben, leaves young Ase only the rind of contempt. When...