THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 TAG: 9606030209
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY
LENGTH: 58 lines
LOST LAYSEN
MARGARET MITCHELL
Scribner. 127 pp. $18.
Lost Laysen is as much a ghost story as a love story.
For in its pages lie familiar character traits and personalities - apparitions - that will evolve into Rhett Butler, Ashley Wilkes and Scarlett O'Hara of Margaret Mitchell's classic, Gone With The Wind.
Lost Laysen, written by Mitchell 10 years before Gone With The Wind, may have played a role in the creation of the famous novel that earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1937, became a movie in 1939 and has sold over 30 million copies in more than 31 countries.
When Mitchell died in 1949, all of her personal letters, journals and manuscripts were destroyed at her request, leaving behind her lone book.
Or so the world thought.
Yet, magically, Lost Laysen survived.
It survived because of another love story. The real-life tale of Mitchell's affection for a man named Henry Love Angel. Mitchell wrote Lost Laysen long-hand, filling two composition books, in the summer before her 16th birthday. She gave them to Angel, then rejected her young suitor. This tale parallels a plot involving two characters in her book.
In real life, Mitchell married, divorced and remarried - but not Angel.
He kept Lost Laysen to his death, along with letters, notes and photographs of Mitchell - and the secret of their apparently unrequited love. It wasn't until years after Angel's death in 1945 that his son discovered the documents and realized their significance.
Lost Laysen contains an introduction by noted Mitchell authority Debra J. Freer that sets the stage to read the book in its proper context. And the real-life drama is every bit as intriguing as the tale of the doomed Pacific island of Laysen. Without that introduction, the novel might be just another immature work by a young writer.
The novel is tight and passionate, if melodramatic. Another love triangle.
Here is the story of Bill Duncan, a rough-around-the-edges first mate, and Douglas Steele, a gentleman and son of an arms manufacturer. The story is an adventure on the high seas told through Duncan's eyes some 15 years later.
Each man vowed to defend the honor of Courtenay Ross, a beautiful and feisty young missionary accustomed to multiple suitors.
``How quickly her moods changed! She could be imperious - tender as a mother - like a giggling school girl - then possessing all the wisdom of centuries of women and full of enthusiasm and life as a little boy,'' Duncan says of Courtenay.
Like Scarlett, Courtenay is not above running to someone other than a gentleman for help.
Lost Laysen is entertaining. And for readers who enjoyed Gone With The Wind, it's an amazing gift - more authentic Mitchell. MEMO: June Arney is a staff writer. by CNB