The spring of 1919 will see the publication of a new novel by Mrs. Willsie, _The Forbidden Trail_, an exciting story of the _Still Jim_ country, Arizona and the irrigable West. The novel deals with the clever efforts of German spies and sympathizers to appropriate for Germany the discoveries and improvements made by the sturdy Americans of our United States Reclamation Service. This theme is not so completely derived from the war as might appear at first glance. Readers of _Still Jim_ will recall in the closing chapters the visit of Herr Gluck to the Cabillo dam and his effort to get Jim Manning to enter the service of the German Government--in a legitimate way, however. Of the illegitimate ways in which Germany was then working among American engineers Mrs. Willsie is now free to speak and may be trusted to speak out of an exact knowledge. For her husband, Henry Elmer Willsie, of New York, was an inventor and consulting engineer when she was married to him and with him she spent two years in the deserts of Arizona. Honoré Willsie was born in Ottumwa, Iowa, the daughter of William Dunbar McCue and Lilly Bryant (Head) McCue and a descendant of old New Englanders who went West, the people who form the important background of _Still Jim_ and _Lydia of the Pines_. She is a Bachelor of Arts of the University of Wisconsin and was married soon after her graduation. The two years in the West followed and then the husband and wife came to New York where Mrs. Willsie devoted herself to the task of winning recognition as a writer. She says now: “A plan, and always keeping your eye on what you want to be doing in three years or in five years--that is what makes for success for a writer. “I came to New York with the intention of being a writer. I did not want to work on a magazine or a newspaper. And I wanted to write what I wanted to write. “I had sold Bob Davis [Robert H. Davis, editor of _Munsey’s Magazine_] a little love story called _Beatrice and the Rose_. So after a few weeks in New York I went to see him with a bundle of stories I wanted him to buy. He looked them over and shook his head. “‘Do me something else like _Beatrice and the Rose_ and I’ll take it,’ he said. “‘I don’t want to go on writing stuff like that,’ I explained. ‘If that’s the best I can do I’ll give up writing altogether.’ “‘But nobody wants to read about those deserts and glowing sunsets. There is only one man in New York who will read about deserts--Theodore Dreiser.’ “‘All right,’ I decided. ‘I will go to see Theodore Dreiser.’