Last Byrne

FIELD OF HONOR--Donn Byrne--Century ($2.50). That politics could sever a young married couple is possible but not probable in our times. The late Donn Byrne, like most romanticists, was driven into the past to make his thesis believable. Mr. and Mrs. Garrett McCarthy Dillon lived in the Ireland of Napoleon's day. When Garrett announced that duty called him to the aid of England's Lord Castlereagh, Mrs. Dillon declared that she would have none of her husband if he insisted on serving a man who had caused her pro-Irish uncle to be hanged. Needless to say, they were rejoined after Garrett had several times been wounded, and Author Byrne had avoided a solution of his original problem. But in this last novel he wove, as ever, the Hibernian, theatrical beauty of a style that many found so "brave" in The Wind Bloweth, so "radiant" in Messer Marco Polo, so "heart-wringing" in O'Malley of Shanganagh, so "tender" in Blind Raftery.