A good example of how much may be done with a modest one or
two talents is afforded by Elia W. Peattie's unpretentious little
volume, The Edge of Things. The author is in no sense a
long-distance writer; she is best at ease in the simple, short
story—and she knows it. And so, in undertaking a more sustained
effort, she has frankly adopted the short story form, developing
her plot through a series of more or less connected pictures, each
complete in itself, yet each forming an essential part of the
whole. Her style is simple, too; she is not prodigal of words and
phrases; and yet it is a question whether even Norris has pictured
with more compelling power the desolation of the Southwestern
desert lands, and the morbid influence they have upon men who try
to live too long in these regions which are literally the "edge of
things." The central theme is not without interest, it concerns a
young fellow from the East, who goes out there full of brave plans
for building up a golden fortune from his sheep ranch. And then,
after a time, luck goes against him, and his sheep die, and his
funds run low, and the horror of the desert seizes him, and he
thinks he is going mad, like many another poor fellow whose fate he
hears of. But from this he is saved by a simple air-castle that he
weaves during his hours of loneliness. In the old adobe house, to
which he has temporarily fallen heir, he finds a woman's glove; and
later, scratched on the wall, a verse in a woman's writing. And
from these trifles he reconstructs a personality, and fills the
place with the companionship of an imaginary form and face. And
for the sake of rounding out the story, the girl whom he has
constructed in his day-dreams turns out to be a real person after
all. But the value of the book is not in the story, but in the
atmosphere, the wonderful sense that you have of loneliness and
isolation and endless monotony.
