What had been typed had been included in the posthumously edited and published 1939 novel, The Web and the Rock[2][4] as well as in From Death to Morning and Of Time and the River.
[2] Frank Levering described the novel as "an exotic, unique experience for the reader... Esther Jack is a compelling character – a girl and young woman with an open mind and a clear-eyed passion for life as it comes.
Through her eyes, aunts, cousins, schoolmates, her mother and friends of the family come alive vividly – a parade of flawed humanity on the streets of old New York.
Readers who come fresh to it, never before having read Wolfe, may well be stunned by his power, and may start questioning the skinny little sentences and squeaks of feeling in today's writers.
"[2] Kirkus Reviews said that "The novel is a meditation, in Wolfe's boldest style, on time as a dark, rich river" and that although "there are clinkers about the Jews, things Esther would never say or think, and some of his women are sticks... all is forgiven in the sheer magic of Wolfe unbound", the whole resulting in "An often stunningly disciplined first draft – by a genius.