“The book is worth reading for itself and also because it brings saliently to mind some of the things which are essential to liberty and combined effort in civilized countries, as well as in desert islands.”
+ Outlook 126:600 D 1 ’20 90w
“The book was not written to prove anything for which many will be thankful.” Caroline Singer
+ Pub W 98:1190 O 16 ’20 180w
“It is an entertaining tale which holds the reader enthralled through its various stages.”
+ Springf’d Republican p9a O 31 ’20 200w
MACDONALD, GREVILLE. North door. *$2 (1½c) Houghton
20–26987
This romance, whose scene is the coast of Cornwall more than a century ago, has a historic background. It shows us the dawn of modern industrialism and how a country’s prosperity may be paid for with the blood of a once prosperous peasantry. The central figure is a saintly but rather unorthodox priest who puts his faith in the good to the supreme test by himself crossing the threshold of the accursed “North door” of the church in search of the reality of sin and evil. He finds both only to see it vanish before the higher reality of a divine goodness. A two-fold romance runs through the story, that of a peasant girl’s heroic love for a giant fisherman and smuggler and the highly spiritualized romance between the priest and Lady Evangeline.