New York: Macmillan Co. 1922. 12mo. iv+534 pp. $2.00.
RECENT fiction shows two plainly marked currents of interest. One of them is concerned with the part that sex plays in life. The characters in the books of this type are led through many primrose paths, and they generally end in darkness. The other current concerns itself with the religious natures and longings of men and women. The War forced upon thousands of hearts the poignant question ‘Is God good?’ Old Crow gives a deep and convincing answer to that question.
In construction, style, variety, and charm the book shows a far riper art than any previous work from Miss Brown’s hand. The characters are her favorite New Englanders. There are two heroes, — uncle and nephew, — both in love with a delightful, whole-hearted girl; the minor characters are in the midst of all the complications of toiling and thinking and loving and hating which to-day are following on the War; and finally the stress is shown to be greatest about the figure of Raven — the middle-aged hero whom the War has left in despair of human or divine goodness.
To Raven’s hand, at a critical moment, comes an old, mottled blank-book, half-filled with a journal written years before by his uncle, who had been nicknamed ‘Old Crow.’ He had lived a sort of hermit’s life in a woodman’s cottage. He had a tender heart, feeling keenly the pain of others — even the agony of the trapped rabbit, and the bird wounded by a careless hunter. He went about doing good to the poor and the sick; he refused ordinary social pleasures; he died alone, at last, but truly mourned even by those who laughed at his queernesses. In the mottled book he had set forth the puzzle of his life. The world seemed to him full of fear, and of the fear of fear. ‘I call to God,’ he writes, ‘and ask Him why He had to make it so. He never answers.’ Old Crow was lonely, perplexed, in despair. He literally passed through the dark night of the soul — and then there broke upon him a light! He began to write about that light, and what he wrote was ‘faithful and true.’ Only about twenty printed pages in the Book! But it brought to Raven the comfort and the guidance that he sought. He passed it on from one person to another. It served in many diverse needs. It helped adjust hopeless love-affairs; it repressed feminine gossip-venders; it steadied crazy-headed fanatics. It brought sanity and peace to heavy hearts. The old mottled Book revealed itself as a priceless treasure, as a veritable power-house, in a fascinating novel which holds one’s attention from first page to last — a delightful last page, because it gives promise that Nan and Raven will live happy ever after!
As for the secret of the Book, it is there for him who runs to read. It is in quite simple words, and many of them fall into familiar phrases. In the end ‘Old Crow’ learns that Fear and even Death are friends, not foes. ‘In the loneliness of the remote shepherd who charts the stars’
Old Crow finds the open road through the wilderness of doubt — and the great light was there and he was going always toward it!
HELOISE E. HERSEY.