Fool's Haven

(Pp. 210. $2.75.). Boston, Mass.: House of Edinboro. 1953. THIS is a crusading novel by a former U.S. Army engineer and is concerned with a problem perhaps not so important here as in the United States, but one which the reviewer has encountered once. Laid in a technical college in Pasadena in 1930, it is concerned with a description of what happens when a self-appointed minister counsels against medical attention for the daughter of one of his followers, practises faith-healing and the girl dies from appendicitis. The legal anomaly against which the author protests is that the parent who denies the child medical aid can be punished, yet the pastor who counsels that denial goes free. In general, when an author writes a crusading novel, it is poorer literature than when he is less concerned to right the wrongs of mankind. Mr. Cawley's novel is not great literature, the characters do not come to life and the book, apart from a rapidly developing love affair between the narrator and the victim, a girl of 17 years, is concerned mainly with the illness of the girl and her brother, the stubborn faith of the widowed mother and the advice of her pastor. There can be no doubt that the book poses a problem. When those legally responsible for their own actions refuse medical treatment their conduct is sometimes most vexatious and that of their spiritual advisers may seem to be even more so. The children of persons so misguided excite our sympathy and sometimes our passions. Much discussion on this subject might, however, broaden the ethical problems concerned very considerably and emphasise the conflict between much accepted medical practice and the faith of millions. It is perhaps fortunate that here faith-healers are numerically few, and that, in serious illness, the resolution of their adherents is more liable to be shaken by the common sense and prejudice of their friends and neighbours than sustained by the ministrations of their pastors.