OVERWHELMING VICTORY

Eleven real-life stories of spiritual victory-through-adversity (mostly getting religion Chuck Colson-style when the bottom falls out) written by a BBC economics correspondent who underwent a Christian conversion in the wake of a tax fraud conviction. Each of his protagonists gets trapped in misfortune (lovelessness and drugs, a wrecked career, racial discrimination, poverty, incurable disease, and even the bonds of wealth), experiences helplessness, despair, self-disgust, and is thereby opened to the presence and power of God and forced to put priorities straight. The clear moral is that we come to know ourselves and what really brings happiness when the props of worldly success and well-being are stripped away. For all their moralizing, these mini-biographies are effectively rendered, their common-man subjects attractive and interesting, and the maudlin tone characteristic of much inspirational literature muted. Reader's Digest fare with a Billy Graham slant.