Publisher's Synopsis
JACK LONDON is always at his best when there is action, inevitable action to be painted, or the stress of man in the face of such action. And, one of the later novels which is possibly the most striking of all of them and the one which is most different from anything else that Jack London has done before is "The Jacket (The Star Rover)." Here indeed, we find a new field for the man whose feet had hitherto been firmly planted on the earth and whose heart beat in tune with the primitive forces of nature. The subject is not a new one, the story of the man whose soul wandered back over the ages and picked up the threads of former lives, has been done by others. But the sudden spring out of the here-and-now into the realms of pure imagination was an unexpected one for Jack London to take, although it was hinted at in one or two of the later short stories.
In bigness of canvas, in epic grandeur of treatment there is something about this book which differentiates it from anything else in the long list of Jack London's works and yet it is somehow a book which might have been foreseen, for all through it there laughs that one quality of riotous joy of living which always will be the memory Jack London's admirers hold longest. With the joy of living crushed out of him by a straight-jacket in the prison, the one-time professor's brain went soaring through the past and there resumed the glorious battle for existence that was denied him by man's cruelty in his present state.
The book is a strong arraignment of prison conditions, too, but not for that will it be remembered.
