A Bend in the River — Norma Newcomb

Why would a big city girl leave a plush job - and a fiance - in New York, to be a librarian in a small Montana town?

Young Gerry Dorsett fled to Bog Water hoping to find a new life - perhaps a new love. But she could not escape the horror which had sent her to seek a new career - a new life - in the West.

Gerry Dorsett, the new librarian in Big Sky, Montana, was both astonished an impressed when a scrawny, big-eyed girl of ten asked if she could take out a volume of the Harvard Classis over the weekend. Since it seemed to Gerry that folklore and fable were made infinitely better reading for a child than TV-inspired juveniles, she waived the library's rule against checking out reference books.

That was her first mistake. The second was discussing the infraction with the chief county librarian, who disapprove of Eastern women, particularly those who arrived from nowhere, so to speak, and felt strongly that Gerry's job should have gone to a local girl instead of an outlander.

Fortunately, however, Big Sky also boasted a doctor who understood big girls as well as little ones, and who understood both the youngster's need to express herself and the librarian's need to forget the horror which had sent her to seek a new career in the West.