Vintage 1956 book club edition. From book flap, It was spring in Nova Scotia when Neil Jamieson returned to Oak Falls. Wild and resentful, he had run away fourteen years before. Now, still blustering and belligerent, educated but not subdued, he took a fresh look at the citizens of Oak Falls and particularly at the time town's decaying sawdust aristocracy. Sam Quarrender, once an upstart amid that aristocracy, was now Senator. He had political power - and time power - for he had bought most of the forest that once belonged to the Jamiesons and other old-time Oak Falls residents. The Senator's son, Steve, had also succeeded - Steve had married Louise, Neil's boyhood sweetheart. Neil was not sure why he had come back to Oak Falls when he had already made his reputation in Ontario. But once he was there he saw things that gave fire to his old resentments. He suspected that the Senator had not gained all those property rights legally. And he doubted that Louise had the perfect marriage with hard-drinking, fast- living Steve.