Li'l OId Tearjerker

GOODBYE, MY LADY (222 pp.)--James Street--Lippincott ($3).

Like most successful old fiction pros, Novelist James Street (The Velvet Doublet, The Gauntlet) knows the value of a timely yank at the heartstrings. In his latest, Goodbye, My Lady, the yanking is continuous. His hero is Skeeter, a likable 14-year-old who lives with his illiterate uncle in a shack on the edge of a Mississippi swamp. Life is simple to the point of vacuity--a little huntin', a little fishin', some wood cuttin' when the groceries run low. "Swamp sprout" that he is, Skeeter dreams mostly of a "li'l old" shotgun. Uncle Jesse has his dream too: he's going to get him a set of "Roebuckers" (false teeth) so he can "eat me a bait of hicker' nuts" and "enough roasting ears to kill a goat." When Skeeter finds him a "li'l old puppy dog" lost in the swamp, life seems about as sweet as it can be without a shotgun. Thing about Lady is. she can't bark, but she can laugh and cry real honest-to-God tears. And Skeeter trains her until she can point quail at 50 yards. When, at book's end. Skeeter has to give up Lady to her true owner, the scene is enough to pierce the heart of the most hardened dogcatcher. No doubt about it--Novelist Street has written him a little old classic of the maudlin school.

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