2251 For Mary, With Love, by Thomas Savage (read 25 Nov 1989) This is the fifth Savage novel I have read. It is the story of a stunning, sexually attractive daughter of a Danish dairyman who in Villiars, Ill., befriends a plain rich girl, induces her brother to break up with his fiancee, goes to the Grayling, Montana, area as a tutor, marries a rich rancher's son (who doesn't tell her he has multiple sclerosis), abandons him to be a kept mistress of a rich San Francisco merchant, induces said merchant to seek a divorce, takes up with--and marries--an Englishman. They go broke in the Great Depression, etc. Mary is such a bitch I would have loved to see the book end with her being told the bequest to her was for $100. There are disturbing obscene slang usages--though not hoards of them. The writer's paganism bothers. However one does want to keep reading since there is always something happening. I think Savage is a worth-reading novelist. ( )