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THE SON OF ADAM WYNGATE by Mary O'Hara

THE SON OF ADAM WYNGATE

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Pub Date: April 4th, 1952
Publisher: McKay

A book that stands alone in Mary O'Hara's record, distinguished as it is by such popular favorites as My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead, etc. (Note new publisher, the others were done under the Lippincott imprint.) The impact of this book lies in its spiritual and mystical message; the underlying lesson that one must offer up ones passions and despairs and pain to win to the full power of spiritual strength. Bartholomew Wyngate, popular and successful minister in an Episcopal Church in Brooklyn Heights, is the focus of the story. As a spiritual leader he exerts tremendous influence, helps those in need. As a man, his weakness is in the power exerted over him by his wife, Louise, whose attraction for other men is an uncontrollable urge; and in his fear of his older brother Ramsey, whose sinister will to power is compensation for his own failures, his dependence on his rich wife, Anna. A strange triangle, this, with ramifications which bring into its orbit parishioners, associates, relatives, and the compelling charm of the five children, gifted, often rebellious, skillfully drawn as characters in their own rights. A family story, set against Brooklyn Heights and Kennebunkport of the early 20th century, when Victorianism was dying a painful death. But a story in which some readers may feel that Mary O'Hara has let the philosophy swallow up the story.