In the mid-1950s, when Mary Lee Settle published The Love Eaters and The Kiss of Kin, critics hailed her as a sharp and acidic writer. However, when in subsequent novels the focus of her work shifted from contemporary social realism to historical fiction, the same critics who previously had praised her work lost enthusiasm. In Mary Lee Settle's Beulah Quintet: The Price of Freedom, Brian Rosenberg examines Settle's work--especially...