One of the clever bits of fiction that will have a wide circulation this summer is a novel by a Southern Pines writer, Katherine Newlin Burt, whose story, “Q” is just issued by Houghton, Mifflin Company. Mrs. Burt has a familiarity with the West and with the East, and she succeeds in bringing a rather lively Western man to the East to mingle with acquaintances he has made while the Easterners were traveling in the wild and woolly belt. The writer has her characters right well in hand and she makes an interesting volume.
She creates a right faithful reflection of the western character, appreciating the influence of the free existence of that section of the country in forging habits and sharpening the observation and analytical powers of the people out there, and she has no small knack of measuring the folks of the more sedate and established East. In consequence she carries sufficient naturalness and philosophy through the story to make it worth while, and she gets her effects without very much of the extravagant distortion of mortality that marks too much of modern fiction.
Mrs. Burt’s book is one of the best that have come out this year. It will meet the approval of those who care for a bit of romance with a pretty fair type of a rough diamond in it, a pretty fair type of a girl, and enough regard for the family that you can leave it on the table where the younger members can get hold of it, without having to salve your conscience as you do with a large percentage of the fiction of this day of the hilarious Vanity Fair atmosphere. The book is on sale at Hayes’ store in Southern Pines, where a window is full of a pile of the issue.
Mrs. Burt lives in the Tiers house in Southern Pines, a short distance from the Highland Pines Inn. Across the street lives Hugh Kahler, who last year brought out the book “Babel.” Mrs. Burt’s husband is also a writer, and down the street three or four hundred feet, Donald Herring, another writer is completing one of the fine new homes of the last winter’s crop of buildings. The Burts are not so long in Southern Pines as the others, but Mrs. Burt puts out her new book while a Moore county resident, and that makes it a Moore county book and her a Moore county author. The price indicated on the book is two dollars. Apparently that sum sent to Hayes will bring a copy. In addition to the merits of the book that are its merits of its own worth, it has to recommend it to Moore county people and Moore county visitors that other virtue that it is a local product. That, as Abraham Lincoln said of the rat hole in the corner of his office, is always worth looking into.
From the front page of the Moore County News, Carthage, N.C., Thursday, May 4, 1922. The newspaper spelled her first name as Katharine in the headline and Katherine in the story. "Q" by Katharine Newlin Burt can be read online at Google Books, https://books.google.com/books?id=7gYXAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
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