SOME RECENT. FICTION.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1940, 24 December 1913, Page 11

SOME RECENT. FICTION.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE INNER SHRINE. Quite tho best American novel I have road for some time past is "The Way Homo ' (Methucn and Co., per Georgo Robertson and Co.), by tho author of that beautiful and remarkablo book, '•Tho Inner Shrino." Mr. King's now story will specially appeal to lady readers, in that its leading motif is the devotion, to a husband who is sometimes unworthy of it, of a wifo whoso natnro is much finer, much moro delicately balanced than that of her husband, a keen and shrewd and not over scrupulous business man. Hilda Penrhyn, afterwards Hilda Grace, is .1 heroino of whom any author might well bo proud and tho subtlety with which her character is developed, and tho commanding interest of her sliaro in tho somewhat rolmstous life of Charlie Grace, a successful railway promoter and director, is most fascinating. Grace, himself, tho son of a fashionablo New York clergyman, becomes, quite early in life, disgusted with what tho. sexton of St. David's calls tho "hollerness" of ''cligion —of the religion of die high pmv lents, the religion of tho rich and snobbish— and becomes an avowed if not exactly a convinced Agnostic. The road which tho. recreant traverses before ho finally returns home, home to Ihc faith of his fathers, and bis wife, is. long and thorn strewn, and tho author's plea for for the soundness of the comfort which can come from religious be!;I . very eloquent. Nevertheless, "ln° Way Home" is not what is usually cal.ed a ' religious story." Tho dominant motif is tho gradual but sure redemption of a rather selfish, self-indul-gent, but . not, at bottom, ill-meaning man, from his own weakness of mind and flesh. "Tho Way Homo" is a very noblo story, which rinn;s truo throughout. It is specially rich in minor characters, each and all of whom the reader comes to know, by the time 110 has reached tho final chaptcr, as well as if tlie.v had been personal acquaintances in real life. By all means placo "The Wav

Homo" on tho next list you send to your bookseller.