Career Woman

HELENE --Vicki Baum -- Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Grand Hotel made Authoress Baum's reputation in the U. S., but in her Fatherland Helene is the favorite. It is a better book than Grand Hotel. Of the same type as H. G. Wells's Ann Veronica and Sinclair Lewis' recent Ann Vickers, Helene should certainly not be rated lowest of the three.

Penurious student at a German university, Helene was also pretty--except for her capable hands, which were always stained with chemicals from the lab. Her single-minded ambition was to take her doctorate, make a name for herself in chemistry. She adored her great Professor Ambrosius but gave her love to a fellow-student, young Rainer. Careful in everything but that, she found she was going to have a baby. Her budget threatened, she thought of an abortion but the price was too high, in many ways. Rainer suggested a mutual suicide; at the last minute her courage failed her. Arrested for his murder, she was cleared for lack of evidence, but her career at that university was ended. She went to another, had her baby, made ends meet by hard odd jobs, took her degree summa cum laude.

Meantime Professor Ambrosius had been having his troubles. His wife left him; he bungled suicide and gradually recovered. When he got Helene a job assisting old Kobellin in his endless researches for a rejuvenating essence, her career was made. Six years later the discovery of Vitalin gave Helene everything she had always pined for: a good job with a great commercial chemistry firm, time to rest, money to burn, and best of all, Professor Ambrosius.

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