This novel by one of America’s foremost writers—and perhaps the most truly American of all—is rock-based in values and virtues which most of the time seem to have disappeared from our fiction, if not from American life itself. The story of a storekeeper turned minister, A Simple Honorable Man is the fictional record of a life spent in the service of others, a life bringing the power of simple goodnessto obscure, sometimes earthy and violent people. Harry Donner (the father in Mr. Richter’s previous novel, The Waters of Kronos) stands in this novel as a man of integrity engaged in the day-by-day activities of son, husband, father, friend, and counselor in an age when home and family exerted moral conviction and social authority. Written with Conrad Richter’s customary grace of style and purity of vision, A Simple Honorable Man joins the long list of his moving and evocative portrayals in fiction of American life.
