Ruth Moore’s richly textured novel follows the lives of Hillville residents over a span of six months and the sometimes sullen, resentful violence that seems to pervade the down and out town. Here, Moore successfully explores a dramatic range of human experience; from the innocence of childhood to the wisdom of age, from the sweetness of young love to the violence of murder-of both the body and the spirit. In this once prosperous Maine town, it seems everyone is now desperately looking for the revitalization spawned by a second growth.