Pity is Not Enough

4905. Pity Is Not Enough, by Josephine Herbst (read 24 Feb 2012) The author was born on Mar 5, 1892, in Sioux City and is the subject of an excellent biography by Elinor Langer , which I read with much appreciation on May 25, 1985. But this is the first book of Herbst's which I have read. It tells of a family:of a mother and six children: Joe, Catherine, Aaron, Hortense, Anne, and David. Joe goes to Georgia and gets mixed up with carpetbaggers and commits fraud--which dogs him for years but of which he never is convicted . None of the boys are admirable, but the mother and the girls are hard workers and always loyal to the non-admirable boys. The prose is somewhat choppy and the author sometimes tells what will happen in the future, show more thus lessening one's interest in the account as it proceeds. Most of the family is dogged by poverty and the book is pretty doleful. But I think I may read the next volume in the trilogy, The Executioner Waits. show less