When Winter Comes to Main Street

by Grant M. Overton

iv

Francis Rolt-Wheeler has spent years at sea, travelled a great deal in the West Indies, and South America, trapped at Hudson Bay, punched cattle in the far West, lived in mining camps, traversed the greater part of the American continent on horseback, lived with the Indians of the plains and lived with the Indians of the Pueblos, was a journalist for several years, has been in nearly every country of the world, and when last heard from (May, 1922) was meandering through Spain on his way to Morocco intending to take journeys on mule-back among the wild tribes of the Riff. He is studying Arabic and Mohammedan customs to prepare himself for this latest adventure. He writes boys’ books.

Can he write boys’ books? If a man of his experience cannot write boys’ books, then boys’ books are hopeless.

Plotting in Pirate Seas, besides the thrill of the story relating Stuart Garfield’s adventures in Haiti, contains glimpses of the whole pageant we call “the history of the Spanish Main.” There is a chapter which gives an account of Teach and Blackbeard, the buccaneers. Other chapters offer natural history in connection with Stuart Garfield’s hunt for his father. The boy gets an inside view of newspaper work and a clear idea of native life in Haiti and of conditions which brought about American intervention on the island.

Hunting Hidden Treasure in the Andes is, explicitly, the story of Julio and his guidance of two North American boys to the buried treasure of the Incas; but the book is much more than that. It gives, with accuracy and exceptional interest, a panorama of South American civilisation.

These are the first two volumes of the “Boy Journalist Series.” Two other books, the first two volumes in the series called “Romance-History of America,” are:

In the Days Before Columbus, which deals with the North America that every youngster wants to know about—a continent flung up from the ocean’s bed and sculptured by ice; a continent that was kept hidden for centuries from European knowledge by the silent sweep of ocean currents; a continent that developed civilisations comparable with the Phoenician and Egyptian; the continent of the Red Man. The book places what we customarily call “American History” in its proper perspective by hanging behind it the stupendous backdrop of creation and the prehistoric time.

The Quest of the Western World is not the usual story of Columbus, preceded by a few allusions to the adventurings of earlier navigators. Dr. Rolt-Wheeler has written a book which goes back to the days of Tyre and Sidon, which includes the core of the old Norse and Irish sagas, and which comes down to Columbus with all the rich tapestry of a daring past unrolled before the youthful reader. Nor does the author stand on the letter of his title; he tells the story of the Quest both backward and forward, tying up the past with the present and avoiding, with singular success, the fatal effect which makes a child feel: “All this was a long time ago; it hasn’t anything to do with me or today.”

And now two new Rolt-Wheeler books are ready! Heroes of the Ruins, the third volume of the “Boy Journalist Series,” tells of a fourteen-year-old who lived for four years of war in trenches and dugouts. Andre, the Mole, went from one company to another, dodged the authorities and successfully ran the risks of death, emerging at the end to take up the search for his scattered family, from whom he had been separated in the early days of the fighting.

The third volume in the “Romance-History of America” books is The Coming of the Peoples, which tells how the French, Spanish, English and Dutch settled early America.