I get Wednesday mornings off and I almost always start the day by going for a walk at the park. On one such day in March, I went for my walk and an unexpected shower came up and ran me back to my car. On the way there, I passed the Little Library box, and knowing I had nothing to read in the car, I grabbed this Taylor Caldwell book and sat out the storm reading it. I got several chapters in and decided to leave the book in the car for times when I needed reading material when I was out. Since then, I have gone back to it almost weekly, between errands, waiting for doctors, waiting for my hair appointment.

I remembered Taylor Caldwell from my distant youth, someone I had read then and totally forgotten since. I’m unsure which of her books I might have read, certainly not this one, because I don’t think Dan Hendricks is a character you would ever completely forget. He is unique and the book is a study in the narrow-mindedness of small towns in early 20th Century America and the strength of character that makes a man stand by his own convictions and refuse to cave to crowd pressure. There is some of that still in us, is there not. I see people all the time who want everyone to be like them, think like them, and applaud them, and if they are not, if they do not, they are excluded. It is just harder to completely isolate a person in today’s big city, moving population world, than it would have been in a town where everyone knew you, nobody ever left, and dividing lines were decided at birth, as we find in this pre-depression era world.

Dan Hendricks is such a man. As a boy he is deemed not as good by the reigning adults. His father is a mere blacksmith and his mother is dead. He is somehow different and the children who attempt to torment him become the adults who shun him…until of course his fortunes change and they want to have his ear. But Hendricks is a man of honor and strength; he cannot be cajoled or bought. He has gone his own way, quietly, because it is the right way, and they resent that superiority in him that they recognize and wish to destroy. He can never be one of them, and they will never let him exist in their world in peace.

I found this book fascinating, because, while I would not say it was a great book, I kept going back to it readily and never once wondered where I had left off or what was going on in the last chapter I had read. It stuck to my mind like glue, even in this very weird (for me) and protracted reading situation.

The book is peppered with astute thoughts, particularly from the narrator as he attempts to determine what makes Dan Hendricks different.

He had lived among us but not with us. He had been a stranger who had made no effort to learn our language, not from superior contempt, but from utter indifference. Because he really had not seen us. Yes, perhaps that was it. Mankind can endure any affront except not being noticed.

And to digest his own growth process,

In the spring my father died of apoplexy. As I looked at him in his casket, I had the strange thought that I had never really known him, that he had died in mystery…To me it is the greatest grief of all; that we never in reality see those who are closest to us. Perhaps seeing them after death, we would not recognize them.

This past Wednesday, I finished the last chapter and slid the book back into the Little Library box from which it came. It was a little strange to know that I would not have it to turn to next week, and I will need to supply a replacement.

I’m not sure I will ever seek out another Caldwell. Her writing is dated and her style is somehow slightly unsatisfactory, never quite engaging you with her characters, and yet, I want to give her her due for writing a book that I know I am not ever going to forget…or at least one character for which that is so.
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