THE STRANGE ONE OF BARRA

Report repeated from p. 466 of the July 1st bulletin; this title was postponed for selection by the Literary Guild. ""The 'Strange One' is a barnacle goose, native to the Hebrides, who is carried by the aftermath of a hurricane to Northern Canada where he is instrumental in uniting the destinies of an Indian girl, Kamina, and Rory MacDonald, a student of biology at the University of Toronto and a native of Barra. Kamina and Rory are both products of societies far removed from the mainstreams of 20th century life, but, plagued and embittered by racial prejudice, Kamina returns to her tribe and tries to forget her intellectual ideals, while Rory has turned his back on his superstition-riddled birth-place and is working for his doctorate. They fall in love, but Rory, mindful of the role a wife can play in furthering his academic career, leaves her. However, the behaviour of the barnacle goose, whom Kamina and Rory banded, changes his mind... Forced though the symbolism surrounding the goose may be, simple as the characterization is, this is an effective and rather unusual book that should appeal to the fiction reader with a plus interest in biology and anthropology.