Kinship with nature and tenderness with human frailty characterize Thomas Hardy's brooding and powerful novel, The Return of the Native. He sets his stage on the heaths and in the villages of his beloved Wessex and unfolds a drama that becomes the living symbol for the universal struggle of existence. His characters have the solidity of the landscape against which they enact their tragic fates, and if one stands out above the others, she is Eustacia Vye, as memorable a woman as life or the art of Thomas Hardy could create. Other books by Thomas Hardy in the Modern Library: Jude the Obscure M.L. No. 135, Tess of the D'Urbervilles M.L. No. 72, The Mayor of Casterbridge M.L. No. 17.