Joseph Hergesheimer

“ If a man can sit in a little Pennsylvania town and write such a book as this, then surely the day when America can challenge all literary Europe has arrived.... His descriptive sketches are like the oil paintings of a master, all colour and life and a flash of soul. ”

“ It is, however, concerned with no purpose but that of human happiness. In detail it is the story of the incalculable effects, through a century and a half, of a heedless and overwhelming love: there is great possession, retribution, and a wreath of victory.
"... He has here fashioned a novel out of distinctly American life on an original pattern, caught the very air and flavor of three widely seperated epochs of our history, evolved living men and women, and told the story of their lives with skill and art and understanding.... ”

“ Hergesheimer is a master in his portrayal of the mind of man and the blind, not-understood, forces which urge him to what he does. He has brought out the haze which surrounds the consciousness of man very realistically. The book is finely done, and the three black Pennys live as only rarely happens in the characters of fiction."—Boston Transcript. ”