“Of flowers and birds and the simple life Mr Burroughs has something to say, his divagations on the universe leave us doubting. It would in fact be easy to point out a series of shocking inconsistencies into which he has been thrown by his ambitious attempt to combine a wise and wholesome life in nature with a metaphysical theory of natural evolution.”
− + Review 3:392 O 27 ’20 470w
BURT, KATHARINE (NEWLIN) (MRS MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT). Hidden Creek. il *$2 (2½c) Houghton
20–15343
When Sheila Arundel’s artist father dies and leaves her penniless, she counts herself fortunate to be befriended by Sylvester Hudson, who has come into her life thru a painting of her father’s he has just bought to decorate his western hotel. He takes her back with him to Millings, but the reception his family give her makes her eager to be independent and in gratitude to Hudson she consents to become a bar maid in his saloon. The only member of his family who treats her with respect is Dickie, the despised half-drunken son, in whom she discovers a soul akin to her own poetic nature. Her success in the saloon brings her popularity of a kind, but one particularly trying day, culminating in a brutal insult from her employer, determines her to get away and she seeks refuge with Miss Blake, a recluse living on Hidden Creek alone with her dogs and her peculiarities. From the horror that this experience brings, Cosme Hilliard, a hot-blooded young half-Spaniard, rescues her, and for a time it seems that he is to be her hero, but Dickie, whose character has been developing along with hers, altho in a different way, at length comes into his own.
“‘Hidden Creek’ follows no beaten path; its plot is skillfully developed and the story is told with realism and with a sparkling wit.”
+ N Y Times p30 S 12 ’20 200w
“Will be welcomed by the reader with fondness for romance staged apart from the trodden paths of every day life.”
+ Springf’d Republican p11a S 26 ’20 200w