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Review by Lucinda Dyer
For devoted Susan Howatch fans, it was grievous news that "Absolute Truths" would be the concluding novel in her thoroughly addicting series about the ecclesiastical goings on in the English cathedral town of Starbridge.
So it was with real delight that I discovered Nicholas Darrow, the psychically gifted young protagonist of "Mystical Paths," was making a return appearance in Howatch's latest, "The Wonder Worker." Darrow, now in his forties and an Anglican priest, heads a ministry of healing at St. Benet's Church in London. And just two decades before, the Devil is in hot pursuit of Darrow's very soul.
It all begins one rain-soaked day when Alice Fletcher, a thirtysomething overweight virgin with a Cordon Bleu degree, takes shelter in St. Benet's and finds herself falling hopelessly in love the minute she sets eyes on Nicholas Darrow. Befriended by Francie Parker, a worker at the healing center, Alice soon finds she's been taken up as a project by St. Benet's. First it's a recommendation for a job cooking at a posh home in Belgravia and then the offer of a position as cook/housekeeper at the St. Benet's rectory.
Darrow shares the rectory with two other priests, Lewis Hall, his colleague at the Healing Center, and shy young Stacy McGovern, but his wife Rosalind lives at their country home. For Alice, the job seems a fulfillment of her romantic dreams. Lewis Hall, on the other hand, sees the infatuated Alice as the Trojan horse who'll let the Devil slither into St. Benet's.
But Alice isn't the only one taking up residence in that horse -- Stacy is doing secret battle with his sexual identity, Francie's own obsession with Darrow is taking a dangerous turn, and Lewis himself admits to "a lunatic lurch of mine toward sexual idiocy." Darrow, despite his gifts, is oblivious to it all.
"The Wonder Worker" has all the elements we look forward to in a Howatch novel -- a first-rate mystery of the soul with mystical twists and liberal doses of passion, deception and temptation.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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