[In "The Immigrants"] Fast charts the rise of a poor boy—in this case second generation Italian-French immigrant Dan Lavette—to the top of corporate power and money and back down again….

"The Immigrants" moves fast. Several of the characters are stock and predictable, such as Dan's wife, the wealthy, beautiful, but frigid Jean. Yet the action drives along at such a pace that the reader is entertained by events, if not always by the characters involved in them:

Fast's novel is set in San Francisco during the first three decades of this century. It traces the lives of four families—Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Chinese—and shows how the lives of these families are shaped by both their immigrant pasts and the values of the new land.

Dan himself is an American innocent—basically a good man who, only at the end, begins to understand himself and the game he has been caught in….

The most interesting character in the book is Dan's Chinese mistress May Ling, who does understand him and herself and the complex forces of Californian (and American) society in the booming years of the early 1900s….

Fast is a facile writer. He writes in short scenes which rarely run more than half a dozen pages, and out of these hundreds of quick scenes, he compiles his book.

His novel is entertainment fiction—not profound or artistically remarkable, but a good, easy read. Fast is at his best as a storyteller. When he tries to make his story stand for more than it is, when he tries to generalize and call for emotions and significance he hasn't built in, he becomes banal. Fortunately, however, the storyteller usually wins out.