Whopper

NEXT TO VALOUR--John Jennings --Macmillan ($2.75).

In an order issued to his troops before Quebec in 1759, Brigadier General James Wolfe wrote: "Next to valour, the best qualities in a military man are vigilance and caution." Thereupon, exercising vigilance and caution in sending his men up the heights of Quebec, Wolfe valorously engaged General Montcalm's French forces on the Plains of Abraham, routed them. The 13 years of American history which preceded this battle, in the French and Indian Wars, are the stuff of which Next to Valour is made. Its author, John Jennings, 33, began doing research on the period in 1935, in the belief that "a whopping good story could be written of the time." Next to Valour is indeed a whopper--820 pages, full of "God's wounds" and "I'll warrants" and "Your servant, sirs"--but not such a whopper as Anthony Adverse or Gone With the Wind. Nevertheless, Next to Valour moves quickly and adventurously, should be a natural for Hollywood.

Jamie Ferguson fled Scotland when the Stuart cause brought disaster on its adherents. He joined an uncle in Suncook in the Province of New Hampshire, learned woodcraft under old Toby, an Indian. Successful in the lumber trade, he married Dorcas Drew, lived to regret it. After he joined the Rangers of his friend, Captain Robert Rogers, Jamie fought in campaigns around Lake Champlain and Ticonderoga, while Dorcas dallied with his intriguing, traitorous Cousin Hubert, a British officer. Jamie hardly minded, but when Hubert's dark eye fell upon Purity Stiles, whom Jamie now loved, that was a different matter. Hubert framed Jamie on a treason charge, had Purity abducted, kept a couple of jumps ahead until, along about page 800, Jamie's luck began to change.

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