The Wonder Worker

Boston Sunday Globe

A delicious and delightful triumph.

Washington Post Book World

An amazing achievement...Howatch is in many ways herself a wonder worker....She gets down to the bare bones of the battle between good and evil...[and] entertains us masterfully.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

After 17 novels, including the acclaimed series about the Church of England (Absolute Truths), Howatch continues to write impressive fiction imbued with moral questions. Here she darkens her palette and addresses the dangerous side of ecclesiastical power. Four people tell their respective versions of a compelling story that brings forcefully home the theme that 'the wonder worker is the shadow side of the Christian healer,' a person who works miracles to serve only himself. Set in a London healing center (and reprising some characters from the 'Starbridge' series), the narrative examines the self-delusions to which priests are susceptible as they deal with their own humanity. Nicholas Darrow, 45, first met in Mystical Paths, is a gifted healer whose pre-conversion past is filled with hobgoblins and parlor tricks. He is sexually alluring but seems capable of keeping his responsibilities wisely in balance. Everyone is just waiting for him to show himself as fallible. And it happens, with disastrous consequences for the people within his orbit: Lewis, an older priest; a homely cook named Alice; a younger priest, Stacy; and Darrow's wife, Rosalind. Although each is spellbound by Darrow's skills, they all discover that he has serious neuroses, stemming from a childhood dread of chaos. When those issues surface in a sexual miscalculation, Darrow triggers a chain of events that pits the concept of demon-possession against murky definitions of mental illness and forces everyone involved to examine his or her ideas about God and humanity. After some slow going in the early chapters, Howatch engrosses the reader in this splendidly wrought, provocative novel of spiritual ideas.

Kirkus Reviews

Temptations spiritual and mundane face the residents of a healing center as Howatch (Absolute Truths) visits the more controversial side of ecclesiastical life—the ministry of healing and exorcism—in a novel that splendidly mixes riveting storytelling with a moral quest. The protagonist is Nick Darrow, whose bumpy journey to the priesthood was chronicled in Mystical Paths. Now in his 40s, Nick is the head of a popular London healing ministry, St. Benet's. There, with the help of another familiar Howatch character, Lewis Hall, he conducts healing services and counsels those in spiritual distress. Nick seems to have achieved an enviable balance between the spiritual and the corporeal life: The ministry is thriving, his work absorbs him during the week, and on the weekends he joins his beautiful and talented wife Rosalind at their Surrey farm. But evil lurks everywhere, and Nick's empowering sense of control is soon shattered. His troubles begin shortly after he asks Alice, a lonely overeater, to be St. Benet's resident cook. A 'woman of integrity' in love with Nick since she first attended a service of his, Alice hides her feelings until the right moment. Though warned by mentor Lewis to remain humble in the presence of his gifts, and to be careful how he uses them, Nick, upset by Rosalind's unexpected request for a divorce, hypnotizes and rapes her. After he comes to understand what he has done, he collapses in grief and shame. But more challenges are ahead as a possessed volunteer in love with him threatens murder, and a young priest, whom Rosalind tried to seduce, commits suicide. Healing as well as love and redemption are at hand as a wiser Nick confesses toAlice that perhaps while 'wonder workers never fail . . . a priest acquires strength through weakness.' Howatch again splendidly entertains and provokes as she describes a soul's harrowing journey through the dark places on the road to salvation.