"To arrive at some idea of the culture of a certain street in a Middle Western small town shortly before the First World War, is a … delicate undertaking," runs one meditative chapter ending in ["Time Will Darken It"]. But even more delicate, and more difficult, is the projection in fiction of the breathing people, the living relationships, the very air and feeling of such a time and place. Yet that is precisely what Mr. Maxwell …, in a quiet, accurate way, achieves in "Time Will Darken It."

The book's time, 1912–13, and its scene—an Illinois town typical enough to be recognized under many names but here called Draperville—are both still close enough to allow many readers to check their own remembered impressions. The events all rise out of a simple, natural, even common circumstance….

There is a sense of responsibility in Mr. Maxwell's writing. This is a quiet, thoughtful, knowing book. Its design is both simple and rich; its movement is grave. Reading it one feels that its elements—its people and place and time—have been permanently, faithfully rendered. And one cannot help feeling that an effect of this kind was part of the author's primary intention. For all the way through this seems an attempt—beautifully accomplished—at fixing in words a section of the very substance of the near American past, so that a good and important and meaningful thing will not be lost in the darkening progression of our days.