THERE IS A RIVER: The Story of Edgar Cayce

Holt has done well with out-of-the-run-of-the-mill autobiographies and biographies (Ambassadors in White -- Who Nath Alone, etc). Here is another, the biography, unusual and starting, of a phenomenon, Edgar Cayce, Kentuckian, whose psychic learning has confounded scientists. His earliest manifestations, his self cure, his ability to memories while asleep, brought him local fame. This widened when in trances he not only diagnoaced but suggested remedies that cured neighbors and strangers. Always under the investigation of doctors, always having to defend his motives, he tried to make his living in outside fields and never to take money for cures. He tried to find the channel through which to establish a hospital where his gift could be used, but every patron who backed him had had luck, even after the hospital and adjoining college were established -- and were forced to go under. He now ministers to small groups, with the loyal help of the wife he cured of tuberculosis, the son he saved from blindness. An amusing story, with much that will baffle readers, much that will antagonize those to whom psychic manifestations are a bit off the road -- but almost anyone will find it fascinating.