A Place in the Sun

the long version

(From the dust jacket flap) "The story that *A Place in the Sun* tells is remarkable in its simplicity and compelling it its effect on the emotions of the reader. It is the story of Rob Andrews, who had the misfortune to lose the normal use of his legs when he was a child, and tells of his attempt to find for himself a "place in the sun" in the complex structure of the modern world, a place which exists not only on the material plane, but in the spiritual world as well. In this sense, the story of Rob is not only the story of an individual, but becomes, through the author's searching analysis, a symbol of man against his fate--man the eternally crippled, beating his valiant wings against the shifting winds of this, his earth. There are passages of extraordinary and lucid beauty: the death of Rob's mother, her burial, Rob's trip to California in search of his destiny....it is in this lush and subtropical land that the major portions of the tale unfold. For here it is that Rob finds a brief and strange love; here, for one moving moment of time, he finds the place for which he has yearned, only to discover that this too is as ephemeral as the rays of the sun which have returned him the use of his legs. The name Frank Fenton is a noteworthy addition to the list of distinguished young American writers published under the Random House imprint."