The most cautious reviewer can predict skyrocket success for Saratoga Trunk—and not feel that he is getting out on a limb, either. Few of Edna Ferber's vastly popular novels of the past decade have arrived on the book counters with more fanfare. In abridged form it has been serialized by a national magazine, and it will be seen on stage and screen as soon as the ponderous machinery for producing an A spectacle can begin grinding it out. Saratoga Trunk is what is known in a field of human endeavor only slightly less hazardous than the publishing business as a natural.

One can see without difficulty why this should be so. The pictorial qualities of Edna Ferber's costume novels are built-in. Others may write with a fuller knowledge of history or a keener sense of character analysis. But Edna Ferber is almost alone—almost, because Gone With the Wind has something of the same quality—in giving her reader the impression that she is actually writing in technicolor. As fundamentally dramatic as Cimarron, with all the lavish and eye-filling qualities of Show Boat, this new novel may well outstrip either of them in enduring popularity.

Certainly Clint and Clio Maroon are among the most vital and engaging figures in Edna Ferber's long and colorful gallery of heroes and heroines. We meet them in modern Saratoga, where they have been rich, respectable, and powerful—and front page news—for sixty years. The reporters and camera men are gathered again. Is it true, Mr. Maroon, that you've turned your collection of paintings over to the Metropolitan Museum? Is it true your Adirondacks estate is to be a free Summer camp for boys? Is it true you're giving away every penny of your fortune to the government after you've pensioned your old employees?

It was all true, the tall drawling old man agreed. Only that was not the story Clint Maroon wished to tell. He wanted the public to know how he stole the fortune he now proposed to give away—"stole millions from millionaires who were stealing each other blind. We skimmed a whole nation—took the cream right off the top." He wanted people to understand how it was that this could not happen today, and that America was a better and more hopeful land because of it. The reporters would not listen. Clio, white-haired and straight as a reed at 79, had warned him that they would not. A grand old man, Clint Maroon—one of America's first citizens—but his mind was clearly not what it used to be.

It all went back to New Orleans and a house on Rampart Street. Clio Dulaine was half Creole aristocrat, half a nameless member of the underworld. She was beautiful and unscrupulous, and she had resolved not to commit the sentimental follies of her mother. Rita Dulaine had known love and luxury. Clio coveted riches and respectability. She made that clear to Clint Maroon almost at once. She had picked him up in the French Market, a tall Texas cowboy with a white sombrero and a diamond stud. Inside a fortnight she was in love with him and he with her. What was more important, they understood each other perfectly.

Together they hatched the blackmail plot against the Dulaine family which financed their descent upon fashionable Saratoga. They did not go together, which would have been distinctly imprudent. Clint owned a racehorse and was better than fair at any gambling game he had ever heard of. Clio wanted a millionaire—Bart Van Steed for choice. She got off the train, attended by her fantastic colored servants and followed by a cartload of crested luggage, as the Countess de Chanfret. To cap it all she drove up to the United States Hotel in Bart Van Steed's phaeton. A telegram signed with his mother's name had brought him to the station; for young Mr. Van Steed, whose name could be conjured with, was frightened to death of his mother.

Saratoga Trunk is a flamboyant story in a setting to match. No amount of description can suggest half so well as a direct quotation the gusto with which Edna Ferber builds up her background:

Here, in July, were gathered the worst and best of America. Here, for three months in the year, was a raffish, provincial and swaggering society; a snobbish, conservative, Victorian society; religious sects meeting in tents; gamblers and race-track habitues swarming in hotels and paddocks and game rooms … Invalids in search of health; girls in search of husbands. Politicians, speculators, jockeys; dowagers, sporting men, sporting women; middle-class merchants with their plump wives and hopeful daughters; trollops, railroad tycoons, croupiers, thugs; judges, actresses, Western ranchers and cattle men. Prim, bawdy, vulgar, sedate, flashy, substantial. Saratoga.

As polished prose a passage like this may be open to criticism, but it beats into the reader's mind with irresistible energy nevertheless. And it leaves an impression behind, an impression so nervous and colorful and even dazzling that it may outlast many more sober statements.