YET SOFTLY TREAD THE LEAVES Eliza Resford. New York, Vantage Press, c1981. Distributed by Elizabeth Beguin, Site 314, R.R. #3, Qualicum Beach, BC, V0R2T0. 288pp, cloth, $10.95. ISBN 0-533-04516-9. Adult. Reviewed by Mary Fallis. Volume 10 Number 4. 1982 November. This book, an autobiography, is an outstanding piece of writing. For the right people, it will be a "wonderful read," not only because it is the considered account of the life of a very fine person but also because it gives a picture of periods gone by, of a way of life, recent but now gone forever. It includes the saga of a well-to-do English family with two homes, one in Hawaii from which the family fortune derived, the other a newly built stately home in rural England where the author, the youngest of six children, was born and lived the life of the English upper class in the period between the two World Wars. The youngest of the daughters, she was the only one to train for a vocation. Her four years of nursing training took place under wartime conditions. The family would make critical adjustments to changed social and economic conditions in England following World War II. Circumstance gave her experience on five continents, and she recreates vividly life in each at a certain time: Hong Kong only months before it fell to the Japanese; back-country Uganda, still under British rule; an idyllic Hawaii before tourist development started; the Health Service in England under a Labour government right after the war. The latter part of her life belongs to Canada, and I will leave it to your reading to find out what drew her to Canada and remote parts of British Columbia in the 1960s. Again her accounts give impressions of community life before recent developments radically changed living conditions. As the account goes on, her reflections are deeper, and she makes very sane and very illuminating comments on such subjects as class structure, over-population, and the role of women in society. Strongly recommended. Mary Fallis, Prince George, BC.