The Peculiar People

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Adroit plotting and deft characterizations, hallmarks of veteran author de Hartog's fiction, are again present in this final volume of his trilogy about Quaker life (after Peaceable Kingdom and The Lamb's War ). A captivating tale set primarily in the American West of the 1830s, it concerns devout, individualistic members of the Religious Society of Friends (the self-styled ``Peculiar People'') who struggle to put their ideals into practice as they confront divisive issues of human injustice. As they respond to the plights of slaves and American Indians--even as these issues divide their church--de Hartog's characters travel on private spiritual odysseys, grappling with doubts and profound personal weaknesses. At the center of the novel is Mordecai Monk, an affluent English chocolate manufacturer who becomes a seductively eloquent and controversial evangelist, then an abnegating pilgrim witnessing among the dislocated Shawnee, next an uncertain shaman, and ultimately a Quaker martyr. Throughout, he struggles with personal demons and overpowering lust. Indiana schoolteacher Lydia Best, stripped of her position and disgraced for aiding escaped slaves, accompanies Monk among the Shawnee as they are herded west by the U.S. Cavalry. Former Philadelphians Obadiah and Charity Woodhouse undergo similar transformations as they pursue their faith. De Hartog skillfully evokes the Quaker community both regionally and internationally. This is masterful storytelling, conducted in a lively prose full of colorful details and fascinating insights into the subtleties of faith, leadership and sacrifice. (Nov.)

Ray Olson

This concludes, very poorly, De Hartog's trilogy based in Quaker history that began with the highly successful "Peaceable Kingdom". Its premise is intriguing. It follows the career of a middle-aged English Quaker, who in 1832, upon learning that he was the love child of his mother and an itinerant preacher, is seized by evangelical fervor, much to the consternation of respectable English Friends, who dispatch him to the new world. The conservative Friends of Arch Street meeting in Philadelphia in turn bounce him to Indiana. On the frontier, it is felt, his message of accepting carnal love will be less explosive. But when he starts ministering to the Indians, things get cracking, anyway. What's wrong with this tale, strategically set in the aftermath of American Quakers' great 1827 schism (the consequences of which persist to this day), is mostly literary. De Hartog fails to put the reader into the era, to conjure what things looked and smelled and felt like, to limn the social order of either 1830s urban England or frontier America. Instead of such descriptive writing, De Hartog fills the book with talk, which would be acceptable if it weren't shot through with anachronistic idioms and historical improbabilities. Those who prefer historical fiction to lubricious romance (which is pretty much the net effect here) should look elsewhere.