TELL ME, STRANGER

by Charles Bracelen Flood ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Francis Lakeland was fed up with Wall Street; he had to get out. The altars of Earnings and Growth -- and the future in his uncle's firm- were as nothing. Glamorous dreams lured him...And he found an answer in the job of assistant to a woman photographer, a job that would let him see the world- Paris, Carcassonne, Rome, Africa- the Africa of Kenya, Tanganyika, the Belgian Congo, possibly even the rebels' side in North Africa. What he hadn't bargained for was that he would feel like Sarah Benton's gigolo; that she was so beautiful, so tempting, that her hard outer crust became a challenge; that she led him into dangers with callous disregard -- and that finally in a supposedly quiet sector of the Algerian front, he was forced to kill -- or be killed. He did it- and he quit the job. The story is told on various levels of past and present; one gets glimpses into Sarah's past, the man she had married who left her; the man who loved and wanted her. One reads a smoothly flowing travelogue of their journeyings. And -- when the story climaxes in Sarah's confessed need for Frank -- and his inner battle between his religious convictions as a Catholic and his love for a divorced woman- one finds that here is the crux of the whole matter, the ultimate test of both of them. The ending is not- for this reader- convincing; and to give the story- and the characters-their fullness of realization, it should be made so. The final question left is this: Was the whole purpose of the book a religious tract?

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1959

Categories: FICTION