The People: No Different Flesh (Avon S328)

Readers who love Zenna Henderson's Pigrimage will want to read this, her second novel about the People, a race from another planet who become marooned on earth. The People have the very best of human qualities: love, gentleness, spirituality; and also special powers of healing, levitation and other abilites.This book tells the story of a couple, Mark and Meris, who, one stormy night, find a young girl who has fallen in a capsule from the sky, and who has special abilities. Maris and Mark, still grieving the loss of their own baby, must come to terms with the emotional issues that caring for the young girl, Lala, creates in both of them. What follows is a plot that will involve the reader in the magic, compassion and sense of rightness that the People evoke. In Pilgrimage, as in The People: No Different Flesh, the plot shifts between the present day story, and stories about the People from their past, which comprise the People's race memory. Included as one of these memories told to Mark and Meris is a short story, "Deluge", which has appeared in some short story collections. "Deluge" gives the reader a taste of the magical and deeply fulfilling way of life on the People's home planet and tells how the People came to leave it. Other memories tell us what happened to various individuals of the People as they arrived on earth. These add texture and interest to the present-day story, and include events of terrible persecution of the People as well as stories of personal tragedy and joy.Some critics have found Zenna Henderson and her People books too emotionally melodramatic, and indeed, Henderson does have the talent for making vivid emotion come alive on the page. The ending of this book has a fairytale-like happiness that may bring tears to many readers' eyes, although some critics consider Henderson to be too saccharine. To my mind, Henderson's novels, with their emotional brand of spirituality, are uplifting and warming without being cloying. Henderson shows us that there is still comfort and genuine goodness in the world. Reading The People: No Different Flesh is like drinking a warm cup of cocoa in front of a fire on a cold winter's night. END