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.