BIRD OF FIRE

The author of Dust on the King's Highway. A Watch in the Night, The Four Rivers of Paradise produces in this Tale of St. Francis of Assis: an amplification of the terms and values of a moral world, evokes a sense of the humiliations and pretensions, subtle antagonisms and loyalties consonant with the dedicated life. This record of the cloth merchant's son, the ex-soldier who had once thought to be a knight and to do great things and to win glory for them, but who took up a new quest to serve a new Lord is treated within a texture of poetic investiture and moral poise with an impressive security of taste. The author's writing is thoroughly equal to this evocation of overwhelming experience.