The Outnumbered
By
THOSE who have enjoyed The Song of Bernadette will probably take to this rather unusual first novel by Catherine Hutter. The theme of both books is the same — the conquest of force by faith. Like Franz Werfel, Miss Hutter is a native of Europe, though her origins are German rather than Austrian. She did, however, live for a time in the neighborhood of Vienna, and that locale serves her as the setting of this story.
The Outnumbered tells of a little girl named Fehge (her name means literally “little bird”) who was born of Jewish parents, became, in a series of complicated events a Catholic, and was destined for an experience astonishing enough to make her a saint of the Christian calendar beside the peasant girl of Lourdes. The legend of this medieval miracle in modern dress spread over the breadth of the land, and Fehge became the focal point of a pilgrimage that had even the Gestapo worried.
The sweet and simple character of Fehge is well drawn and the atmosphere of democratic Austrian politics between the two World Wars is caught, but in spots Miss Hutter leans heavily on coincidence, and the final burden of her message to a confused world seems, at least to one reader, just a trifle obscure. Dodd, Mead, $2.75.
MILTON HINDUS
MILTON HINDUS