A romance of Billy-goat hill
"An irresistible combination of Southern comedy and high romance. "Mrs. Alice Hegan Rice's new novel bids fair to approach the success of the earlier works that gave Mrs. Rice fame. In this connection it is interesting to note that those that had thought of Mrs. Rice only as humorist, an opinion based on her first successes, 'Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch' and 'Lovey Mary, ' today see the fulfillment of the late Richard Watson Gilder's prediction that she would succeed notably when drawing on 'a broader canvas.' She did not have far to go to find either the 'broader canvas' nor the characters with which to people it, for, like 'Mrs. Wiggs, ' the new novel is in her own Kentucky, and, again, like the beloved philosopher of the cabbage patch, is filled with humor of the kind one expects from Mrs. Rice. The central figure, however, is a wildflower heroine who, through misunderstandings due to a series of dramatic incidents, is parted from the man of her choice and weds an elderly scholar. The lover returns to face charges that had been made against him, and there arise complications that confirm Mrs. Rice's skill as a story teller. The restoration of a boy's power of speech is one of the unusual means by which the tangled situation is made straight." -- from Goodreads
Print Book, English, 1913 [©1912]
Century, New York, 1913 [©1912]