Congressman lke Woodruff has other things

to do than concern himself with the desperate

plight of field-hand Jim Bondy, but he can

find no satisfying escape. His spirited and de-

cisive actions set in motion events that reach

into distant parts of the country and into the

lives, loves and hopes of many people: Bondy

and his children, Congressman lke and his

near and distant kin, Painter Leonard, Dr.

George Izlar and his "imported-from Boston"

Margaret, Businessman Owen, who wonders

if it is too late to become the man he once

wanted to be, and making-believe it is not.

"What do you believe, Owen?" asks Izlar.

"That s what matters. I don t care what you

know." In essence, Izlar was asking: What do

you make-beieve?

That question might well be asked of every

character in this sweeping novel of challenge and passion and interlocking lives, of personal

problems merging with problems of communi-

ty and society, of characters with a human

dimension seldom found in contemporary

fiction-a brilliantly conceived and flawlessly

executed new chapter in the saga of Berry

Fleming s Fredericksville, Georgia.

A critic has said that despite having pub-

lished ten novels, Berry Fleming "never writes

the same book twice." He has written of New

York in To the Market Place; of Americans

abroad in Visa to France; of a country of the

mind in Carnival; of widely varied aspects of

the South in Siesta, Colonel Effingham s Raid,

The Fortune Tellers, The Winter Rider and

Lucinderella. No two are alike.

His novels of the South portray neither

heroes nor monsters. They do, however, de-

pict those characters who give the South its

character. Fleming is never obscure, but he is

never obvious. He writes with imagination,

warmth and a quiet, subtle humor of people

the reader can recognize. His novels are

colored by the perceptions of a mature intelli-

gence and by a style that combines a fastidious

respect for language with a perfect ear for

the Southern vernacular.

Although Colonel Effingham s Raid and The

Fortune Tellers were best sellers and major

book club selections, Fleming s place among

leading American novelists has been more in-

tense than widespread. Thc reader who dis-

covers Berry Fleming for the first time in The

Make-Believers will want to turn to the au-

thor s other books and continue his acquaint-

ance with thc work of this distinguished

novelist.