THE EVANGELIST

A second novel for this season (Jenny Angel by Elsie Oakes Barber- Macmillan) details the soaring success of an evangelist, and past and present converge (and sometimes confuse) the earthly ascension of Sister Edith Flemming. In the corn belt, she meets and marries the Reverend Flemming, who dies leaving her with the infant whom prayer cannot save. But Edith is well along on the road to exaltation and exultation, and a million dollar house of God, in Chicago. There too she becomes involved with Parker Condon, a political wheel; Ben Morgananti, a judge, her convert but Condon's victim in a murder; and Paul Gaudier, an artist, who is to design a stained glass window for her temple. But Gaudier, who becomes her lover, is soon to see that the woman is not much more than her pose, and his design for the window is a brutal grotesque which pricks her burst of glory and drives her to her death... A more explicit examination of the rise- shine- and fall of the professional soul-saver than the Barber book, Otway writes well-although his narrative at times escapes him.