THE RAGING MOON

by Peter Marshall ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 11, 1966

Peter Marshall wrote of his own experience in Two Lives (1963- Stein & Day) which he has guessably used to some extent here in a novel which is far more finished and which at no times dodges any of the uncomfortable truths which disability imposes. Bruce Pritchard, from a ""black bitter"" coal town, comes down with polio and spends two years in a hospital, remembering. The visits of his family and friends bring really nothing of the past. ""They brought grapes."" Paralleling his story is that of Annette, whose mother forced her toward the church, her father toward medicine, until she also contracted the same disease. Both eventually came to a Cripples Home, courtesy of the Welfare people and the Church, a world in which they ""would never want for anything except everything."" Their hope of finding still another world within that world ends with Annette's unnecessary death and is a stinging rebuke to the presumptive evidence of ""God's will."" It is a short novel, written with a sharpness of intelligence and feeling, and it is altogether genuine, a word easily exploited and seldom justified. But books like these, just like the lives with which they deal, are easily shrugged aside.

Pub Date: March 11, 1966

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1966

Categories: FICTION