The People: No Different Flesh

The People

by Zenna Henderson

First time in paperback

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Stories, Speculative Fiction, Anthologies

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Zenna Chlarson Henderson was born on November 1, 1917 in the Tucson, Arizona area. She graduated from Arizona State in 1940 with a Bachelors degree in education and worked as a teacher in Arizona throughout her life. She died on May 11, 1983, at the age of 65, in Tucson.

Henderson is known almost entirely for short stories about "The People." The People are a race of sensitive, human-looking aliens with psychic abilities who are separated after crash-landing on Earth but come to find each other over a period of many years.

Publishing her "People" stories in the leading science fiction magazines of the 50's, 60's and 70's, Henderson became a pioneer in many areas of science fiction literature. She was one of the first female science fiction writers, and was one of an even smaller number who wrote openly as a woman, without using male-sounding pseudonyms or initials (James Tiptree, Jr.; C.L. Moore; etc.).

Henderson was one of the first in science fiction to truly take young people seriously and write expressive, mature stories from their point of view. She drew on her experience as a teacher of young people, and was able to bring a rare level of insight to her use of young characters. Henderson's youthful protagonists are neither adults forced into young bodies, nor are they frivolous caricatures. They are very human, complete souls, yet marked by authentic signs of youth and innocence. Interestingly enough, Lois McMaster Bujold and Orson Scott Card, both of whom mention Henderson as an important early influence, have also been among the most successful chroniclers of young people, with such Hugo- and Nebula-award winning novels as Falling Free and Ender's Game.

Her books and stories about The People were the basis for the movie
The People, 1972, starring William Shatner and Kim Darby. Despite similarities, both Escape to Witch Mountain, 1975, and Return to Witch Mountain, 1978, were a result of books by Alexander Key.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

So here's your obscure literary comparison question for today: Ayn Rand is to Ursula Le Guin as Stephenie Meyer is to...

Give up? Well, I think you can make a decent case for "Zenna Henderson". The parallels with Meyer are striking. Henderson was raised as a Mormon, and made her name writing about "The People", a group of human-like extraterrestrials who live among normal folks in rural America. The People have unusual powers, which they normally hide but can occasionally reveal to trusted humans. There is a strong religious/spiritual component.

I find Meyer's vampires, even the ostensibly good ones, utterly appalling. They live by exploiting ordinary human beings, but only feel contempt for them; the scariest aspect of the series is Bella's desperate desire to join this select group, irrespective of the cost, and the fact that this is presented in entirely positive terms. Henderson's People, in contrast, are moral and caring. They are like us, but a little better, and they are scrupulous about only using their alien talents to good ends. The series is quite competently written, and the South-West background (Henderson lived most of her life in Arizona) is clearly realised. The author's warm, human voice is very memorable.

As is so often the case, however, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Meyer has become one of the most widely read authors of her generation, while Henderson is an minor 60s SF writer that most people haven't even heard of. But I'm glad to see that the ones who do still read her have a high opinion of her work: the 369 ratings posted here average an impressive 4.34. Not quite forgotten yet.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Earth couple save a baby fluttering lost among the trees. After baby Lala is reunited with her father of the People, Johannan and his friends share some of their stories with the couple. Here we learn why the People love so much the memory of their lost planet Home, why they are so careful of the exposure of their Talents; yet all the things the People and Earthmen of good will can do for each other.

The People books are deserving classics for their deeply felt and beautifully written explorations of humanity.

[Valerie]

I remember when Zenna Henderson died. As with many people whom you'd really LIKE to know about, it wasn't reported in major media--I learned about it from Locus. According to biographical sources, she'd only have been about 66 when she died, though she looked much older.

It's doubtful whether she'd have written any more if she'd lived longer, however. She was a careful craftswoman, and her works were few but intricate.

This book was most likely put together in response to wide popular demand. It takes the People back to the loss of the Home, and through to the return of some who went to the New Home.

The bridge story is of a precocious little girl and her father, coming to Earth from the New Home to arrange fosterage of the child after the loss of her mother. I should point out that there's FAR too much infant mortality in this book. Too many babies die unborn or in the first years of life. It's as if Henderson was unable to comprehend the notion that anything might be done to prevent such losses, even among the learned People. There's also a bigoted doctor in this story, who apparently really believes in the nonsensical notion of disposable people. Not a good choice, in my belief. How did somebody with that sort of attitude make it through medical school? It uneasily reminds me of the Nazi Doctors in Lifton's book, and especially of the subtitle of that book. "Medical Killing And The Psychology of Genocide". You'd think that Henderson, who had had close experience with the Japanese-American 'relocation' camps, would know better.

The justification for the stories is Bethie's 'Assembly' of stories for her daughter (who appears in the last story). A few humans get told these stories, as a sort of ransom for the care they gave to the lost child and her father.

The individual stories:

(1) Deluge: If you'd wondered about Bethie's Mother's (Eve's) history, this will give you a rather better introduction than you'll probably like. Getting to know people many of whom are horribly abused later personally and by name makes it harder to deal with their later sufferings. This story is told from the point of view of Eva-Lee, Eve's grandmother, who is as puzzled by her own impending dissolution as by that of the Home.

In this story Henderson pursues her own quarrel with God. She tries to be the advocate of a 'Presence' that would destroy the Home apparently for no better reason than that the People were getting too comfortable in their nest. But she can't really believe that, and her pretexts ring hollow. For one thing, what about the OTHER life in the Home? Even if it might arguably be better for the People to get out and explore (they'd given up space travel generations before), what good does it do the toolas and the feathers and the flamen and the koomatka and other living things, to destroy the Home? Even if nothing is ultimately lost (because it all returns to the Presence (?to be sent out again someday? This part is left (probably deliberately) vague), the loss of THIS life is unredeemable, and the non-People, at least, get little or no preparation or warning. Even the People don't get much, truth be known. They have time to prepare lifeboats--but barely enough--they leave the Home only days before its ending. And it's evident that the Groups on the lifeboats did not have any ancestors (called 'Befores' in this story)who actually knew how to LAND a spacecraft.

(2) Angels Unawares: The community of Grafton's Vow in this story would make a good venue for a horror story. Henderson was well aware of the dangers of fanaticism, and she tried to distinguish between such 'aberrations' and people of 'good faith'. But she's unfortunately too good at delineating the pathologies, and not good enough at presenting the healthy alternatives. One thing that struck me as odd from the beginning was that there was no apparent attempt to police the cult, so that the people of Grafton's Vow were able to put their twisted beliefs into horrific action, and murder very nearly an entire family without any outsiders apparently even realizing what happened. There are many biblical verses cited in this story. One is overt--the people of Grafton's Vow use the 'suffer a witch to live' verse to justify their murders. But the other one which the man who adopts Lytha uses in rebuttal is not presented so clearly: it's the one that says "...and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor, and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another."

(3) Troubling of The Waters: This story establishes dating fairly precisely--depending on whether you consider 'the Turn of The Century' to be 1900 or 1901 (there was substantial debate at the time), the People arrived on Earth in 1893 or 1894.

This is also the story in which infant mortality is the most troubling. The narrator's mother must have been pregnant at least half of the previous 15 years--she produced at least seven children in that period, of whom only 2 survived birth. Perfectly formed children, unable to catch their first breath. Timmy's psychological counseling is of some help to the bereaved isolates--but a good midwife would have been a treasure beyond rubies.

When I first read this story, I was troubled by the resolution. I'd heard of artesian wells and springs, of course, but I didn't know enough about them to spot the catch. I've learned more since. I never did admire the father who insisted on becoming a farmer in an area not suited to agriculture at any time--but I was prepared to make allowances, until I learned the real problem. Those artesian wells are far from inexhaustible. The aquifer they're on is no longer being recharged.

That aquifer (which now supplements the 'sometime' streams and rivers fed primarily by snowmelt from the mountains) was originally filled by the outflow from glacial lakes during the Ice Ages (this had unexpected consequences betimes--the Channeled Scablands in eastern Washington state were formed by at least one collapse of an ice dam holding back glacial Lake Missoula). Those lakes have mostly dried up entirely, leaving places like Death Valley and the Great Salt Lake--badlands with little or no water (and that so briny it can support little life). The water is no longer being fed into the recharge zones. But it wouldn't get in anyway--those recharge zones have been silted up for centuries.

To recharge those sealed aquifers, it would be necessary to open up those recharge zones (and KEEP them open), and somehow transport teratonnes of water (?as snow?) to reservoirs there, essentially recreating Lake Missoula, at least. This is a project that makes even the largest dam projects in the area look lilliputian by comparison. I doubt if even the surviving Old Ones of the Group could manage it--but the 'teener' Timmy is certainly not up to it. At most, he can buy them about a century of water. Then they'll have to go back to the sometime creeks and rivers, and hope that the snowpack holds up.

I was most bemused in this story by the eccentric tuition method of the father in the piece. The habit of answering the last question but one is a method of keeping people on their toes, perhaps...but I don't know if it would work very well in the long run. You'd have to learn to keep a working file of questions you'd asked in your memory, and sort through to try to match questions and answers. Also, I never heard of using tea to treat burns before. It's an odd remedy (perhaps a folk remedy from Europe?), and I don't know how well it would work. But it does tend to underline the fact that even the extremely isolated 'pioneer' communities must have had sustained trade links with the outside world. Coffee is farmed only in tropical regions (mostly mountainous ones, by preference). At that time the majority of coffee in the US would be from Latin America, because the African plantations were very far away, and the Hawai'ian ones would only just have become (marginally) available. As for tea...a quick search reveals only one tea plantation in the Western Hemisphere, in South Carolina. And I doubt that one is as old as 1893/4. Tea imports must have made the tea as rare in the Arizona/New Mexico territories as water in the drought at that time--making it a double extravagance to make up enough tea for compresses. The mother must have been very sure the tea would help, to be willing to risk it.

(4) Return: Contrary to the teaser, I did NOT like this story. The abusive behavior toward Debbie is severely disturbing to me: and worst of all is when she turns these attitudes toward herself during labor. It's probably lucky she wasn't killed by the stress.

Ok, so she was being childish and petulant. And bigoted, to boot. All traits that are not worthy, especially in the powerful. But what actual HARM did she do? She lashed out at people who were trying to help her--but only verbally, except for one instance of breakage. If paramedics took offense at THAT sort of thing, they'd retire very early. People in traumatic situations (and Debbie's is very bad) often take relief in creative expression of their pain. This is normal and healthy, and while it's inconvenient to the Good Samaritans, it shouldn't excite abusive returns.

If the function of 'discipline' is to force people to internalize their suffering, then 'discipline' is a pathological force. But I've always thought this was true. Everytime I was exhorted to practice 'discipline', it developed that what was expected was that I do things I didn't want to at all, and do them cheerfully--and as for thanking people later for the lessons, trust me, I never did. I didn't learn anything by swotting away that I wouldn't have learned more quickly, more permanently, and more beneficially by study--which comes, by the way from a word meaning 'eager'. If you're not having a good time, you're not studying. 'Study hard' is one of your more pernicious oxymorons.

A little sympathy would almost certainly have gone a lot further with Debbie than recriminations and hostile demands that she get over her losses, and stop 'self-indulgent' mourning.

That aside, I did like the description of Thann-too as 'Child Within'. I liked the description of the lack of thoughtlessness and messiness on the New Home, and the complaints about its deleterious effects on the psyche.

These few good elements usually get me past my reluctance to read this particular story: but I have to hesitate, take a deep breath, and get a running start to get through it, every time.

(5) Shadow on The Moon: The 'Doubting Thomas' in this story devotes himself obsessively to realizing his son's dream. It really doesn't matter to him what that dream IS...it happens that it's the same as that of the boy Remy (to go to the Moon). What matters is that it was his son's dream, and his son can't realize it. The father's obsessive dedication is not a matter of devoting his life to anything (he has no life left to devote), but rather a matter of devoting his fiercely postponed death to it. This is a ghost in the truest sense--although his body retains some semblance of life, it's a false ruddiness.

I should point out that the argument that it's blameworthy to devote yourself to achieving something like space travel is one of the main reasons the People made such a botchup of their landing on Earth. Wasn't there ANYBODY on the Home who still nurtured that sort of dreams? Not obsessively...obsession is always pathological. But wasn't there anyone who still 'traveled in spaceships'? No itchy feet at all? No curiosity or spirit of adventure?

In the leadup to one of these stories, there's an uneasy query about whether 'racial memory' can become as vicarious and unoriginal as watching movies and television. Well, maybe--with a caveat. Watching television, movies, etc is necessarily largely vicarious--but that doesn't preclude creative interaction. If the rerealized visions are a spur to one's own creations (as in fanzines), the reliving of others' memories can be a springboard to new discovery. But if one simply subsumes one's own identity into the story, there's nothing new to be learned, even if the story was previously entirely unknown to to audience.

As in the case of Pilgrimage, the bridge story is simply abandoned at the onset of the last story, and never taken up again. What happened to the storytellers? To the audience? To the children? For example, Thann-too is introduced in the penultimate story--and never seen again, though his mother is the conduit of the last two stories. And what WAS the emergency that Bethie was called away on? It's said that Bethie is a consulting diagnostic--but there are few instances where she's actually shown in action. It might have made for an interesting sequel to have a series of stories about cases Bethie and Dr Curtis worked on, for example.

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 2 out of 5]

The second in Henderson's tales of the People, aliens who crashlanded on earth and have to fit in despite their psychic abilities. No school teachers this time (the first book heavily featured teachers, probably because Henderson herself was one), but the framing is evident again, with a couple of humans who feature in the first story being shown what has happened to the people at various times, going back to why/when they left their world.

Although some of the description is vivid, I find it unconvincing in places because some of the stories are actually the recollections of humans who encounter individuals of the People, not the People (who have race memory recall) themselves, and I find it hard to picture how they can have word by word recall of what human beings felt, especially as those narratives start before they encounter one of the People.

*****************
Re-read
My review above stands. I would only add that in one of the later stories, the woman of the People narrating the story is an absolute brat, possibly the author's reaction to the general perception that the People are all absolute paragons of virtue in the majority of stories in this and its predecessor, 'Pilgrimage'. And even so, I didn't really buy the Jemmy character, met in several tales before, stranding a heavily pregnant woman in a flood.

The other point I would make is to add a trigger warning regarding infant mortality because that is a major plot point in two of the stories. As before, my rating is an OK 2 stars.

[Tomislav · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of related stories, providing more coverage before, during, and after the stories included in Pilgrimage, as published during the 1960s. It's probably best to read the two books together. The magical abilities of the The People are assumed to have a rational basis, but without an explanation given. The sentimentality of Henderson's writing was becoming increasingly religious by this time, but essentially the stories are of the same nature.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The People #1 - Pilgrimage
The People #2 - No Different Flesh
Author: Zenna Henderson

I love this series - re-read it regularly! Most of the stories [but not the thread connecting them] have appeared independently in various science fiction and fantasy magazines and some short story collections. The two books have also been collected in the omnibus edition Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson.

Although she was not as well known [or as prolific] as Heinlein and Asimov and Norton, Zenna Henderson is truly one of the Golden Age masters. Like most great authors she uses her stories to ask - and answer - important questions. In the case of the People stories that question might be - what if alien people crash land on earth, and what if they are different - perhaps even better than us?

The People are a race from another planet who become marooned on earth, many injured and killed, most of them separated from each other and not knowing if they are the only survivors. The People have the very best of human qualities: love, gentleness, spirituality; and also special powers of healing, levitation and other frequently miraculous abilities.

Pilgrimage

Before talking about the story I want to give credit to her skills as a writer. Her setting simply glows with the color and heat of the American Southwest. Her people are fully visualized, their emotions vividly portrayed. The plots of the different stories are intense and page turning.

There is a thread which binds the short stories together - the story of Lea who is suicidal but is dragged back from the brink [literally] by a chance-met member of the people. The stories she listens to about their past, their Home, and the landing which scattered and shattered them slowly bring her back to feeling hope...

No Different Flesh

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.
One of the continuing themes in these stories are teachers and teaching and just how much difference they can make in others lives. As a teacher myself, I reread these books to remind me why I was teaching and to refill the well of compassion which sometimes gets drained pretty dry in all of us.

If you're looking for Lara Croft or Indiana Jones - these books are not for you. They will never be made into summer blockbuster movies. These stories frequently require access to the kleenex box but still manage to provide an overall feeling of uplift and hope. And that's something we could all use a lot more of.

[Thom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another series of short stories set in the same world with a connecting story outside them all. Most of the stories are pretty good, with the first being excellent and "Return" feeling very preachy. The previous book was all on Earth; here we get a glimpse of the abandoned Home and a little information about New Home.

Some of the recollections (of the People) delve into what humans knew a little too far, making the story as a whole less believable. The unresolved tale from the first volume is not resolved that I was able to detect. So, good, but not great. Looking forward to rereading The Anything Box.

[Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found a hardback copy of Pilgrimage amongst the family books, and eventually got round to reading it. So when I saw this one on Bookmooch I asked for it.
I do enjoy Zenna Henderson's writing, and wish she had been around for longer to write more and more fully.
She has a light touch and writes concisely, as a series of short, linked stories. She can make her characters real and believable with few words and one cares about what happens to them. The society she writes about is an idealized one, but exists within our flawed society, not rejecting it, but attempting to expand its horizons and improve its structure without imposing the will of the People upon Earth's people.

[Alan Denham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found one of the stories in here way back in the mid 1960s. It convinced me that this genre was what I wanted to read! At that time I didn't realise that there were a couple of books-worth of linked short stories in this world. Imagine my joy when I found out! (And my disappointment that, so far as I know, there are only two books-worth!)
From then on, I read everything by Zenna Henderson that I could find. Over the years, I have come to be a little unhappy about the Christianity implicit here (I prefer my Fantasy to not attempt to indoctrinate me) but the quality of the stories make it worth reading over and over again

[N. M. D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Just because we had our roots on a different world doesn't make us of different flesh. There are no strangers in God's universe."

This is the second fix-up novel about The People, a group of humanoid aliens that fled their dying planet and crashed to Earth.

I can think of only three books that have made me bawl at their conclusions. This book has the honor of being the only to ever make me cry continously, throughout.

Much like Bradbury, Henderson makes me want to quit my efforts at writing. I will never write this well, this precisely emotion-inducing, this evocative, this wonderous, or this beautiful. Her prose and tact are some of the most exquisite in the genre. Zenna Henderson wrote SF that was really literary fiction.

30 pages in and my eyes were already watering. The writing is so perfect that she almost made me cry through the destruction of a character's manuscript.

A concept that upsets me in a deep way is unrealized expectations. A good example are those sob stories where a kid has a birthday party and not a soul comes. Those kind of things DESTROY me. Henderson taps into that idea, both in immediate ways and with deeper ramifications within the narrative, in what those things symbolize. In one story, excited children set out to pick flowers that only bloom on one important day a year. They return crestfallen--there were no flowers. Their disappointment is immediately heartbreaking, but the reader already knows it's because the planet is about to die, so its larger meaning its also devastating. Another example is the aforementioned manuscript, destroyed in a vicious act of petty vandalism. It's immediately sad because it took the man years to write, but it's worse when you find out it was how he distracted himself from the death of his infant.

There are more gut-wrenching moments, like when The People are discussing that their new home might be inhabited, but so much the better, because they'll have help and friendship. But you can guess how 19th century humans respond to flying, fire-producing, mind-reading aliens. The People are so good, so likable, and so tragic.There is so much sorrow and loss for them, but there is so much beauty and goodness too.

[Kamakana · Rating 4 out of 5]

250917: series of linked short stories, 1962 to 1966, that probably has influenced, defined, expressed, our modern myth of aliens come to earth, of how different that is, how we and they might share this particularly American life of the era. this is more history of family, community, education, beliefs, all reconciled, all paralleled, with simple beliefs in something like christianity... religious thought/experience very important this collection as well as dangerous for difference... these aliens are not too alien but sort of a better version of human, more thoughtful, more self-aware- though interpersonal relationships, gender identification, expectations, powers, tendencies, are all of mid-century south western us... love and death and being called back to 'the presence' certainly promises a better relationship between science and religion...

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will remember until I die the hot flat, horrible campground my grandparents dragged the family to and there I discovered The People when my mother finished No Different Flesh and handed it to me to read. The campground in all it horribleness faded away and I became entwined in the lives of other people.
Zenna Henderson unwittingly sparked my first religious crisis when she introduced me to Exodus 22:18 - "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". And at the tender age of 14 or 15, I started to think about the nature of prejudicism and the way religion becomes a shield against fear.

[MaryLou Pearce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zenna Henderson wrote five books based on an alien race called "The People" who are stranded on earth and are very similar to humans with the exception that they have special gifts/powers. An incredible storyteller able to weave a story that draws you into a world that you wish really did exist and to which you could belong. I am lucky enough to have located and purchased all of Ms Henderson's books and they are counted among the books that I treasure and will be with me for years to come.

[Mary Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this over and over again over the years by Zenna Henderson. It still brings much joy, clear discussion about extra sensory perception, how it works, what it is, in a 'sane' way. Well written, and good discussion of it's time. If you can find it, read it! There is so much good here. Original date listed here, is approximate, but it is about the time I FIRST read Zenna Henderson and it's affect on me, is the work I do now. Thanks to Zenna.

[Janis Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A severely under-rated, under-remembered leader in the field, whose influence is quoted by authors as diverse as Connie Willis and Orson Scott Card. Just a seminal concept, written with elegance and wonder.

[Adrian Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book of the People that was compiled out of short stories that were originally published in magazines. There is a small wrap around story to hold them together concerning a young couple who is coping with the death of their first child. While the previous book's stories were mostly set in what was then the present, which is the 1950s and 60s, the stories in this book range from the latter part of the 19th century, when the People first landed on Earth, to the 1970s, when they have also established a colony on another world, and are shuttling back and forth between the two.
Though the religious bent of these stories are quite apparent, the storytelling is excellent. The characters are exquisitely drawn, and the drama between the two races is exceptionally real. There is also one story that shows that, like humans, members of the People can fall from the true belief and show the darkness that lurks in every man's soul. This, far from making them seem contrived, makes them easier to believe in. The technology of the stories is necessarily antiquated compared to our time, but the relationships still hold reality. This is a very necessary follow up to the previous book, and succeeds to cement the People firmly in the science fiction universe. This is the second book of the People that was compiled out of short stories that were originally published in magazines. There is a small wrap around story to hold them together concerning a young couple who is coping with the death of their first child. While the previous book's stories were mostly set in what was then the present, which is the 1950s and 60s, the stories in this book range from the latter part of the 19th century, when the People first landed on Earth, to the 1970s, when they have also established a colony on another world, and are shuttling back and forth between the two.
Though the religious bent of these stories are quite apparent, the storytelling is excellent. The characters are exquisitely drawn, and the drama between the two races is exceptionally real. There is also one story that shows that, like humans, members of the People can fall from the true belief and show the darkness that lurks in every man's soul. This, far from making them seem contrived, makes them easier to believe in. The technology of the stories is necessarily antiquated compared to our time, but the relationships still hold reality. This is a very necessary follow up to the previous book, and succeeds to cement the People firmly in the science fiction universe.

[Mac Spears · Rating 3 out of 5]

A peaceful and optimistic book in narrative with a deep current of sadness beneath. It’s textured reading, but not swift or action packed. Requires patience.

The first pages hooked me. Poetry and prose and evocative description and alliteration and character building and I’m an only a page in. It settles on more traditional novel pacing after, but hell of a start.

I expected more heady sci fi than I am used to reading, but in actuality very simple rules about how ‘the people’ work. Their abilities are not the focus, the family life in the west is. There are real, grounded emotions beneath each of these tales; Impermanence, loss of a child, loss of a husband, loss of a home, of a world.

I’m definitely intrigued by Henderson’s writing. This was a used paperback purchase based solely on liking three cover and synopsis. As I read about her life and work I have no doubt I’ll seek more out.

[Joseph Carrabis · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I wrote in my review of Zenna Henderson's Pilgrimage, a wonderful retelling of the changeling myths.

[Christopher Fry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember reading this book the same month Dark Side of the Moon came out and I would read it with the music playing. I have a permanent connection between these two works of art.

[Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conflicted.

[E. seaberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

really liked this as a child, as well as the others in the series. I still think of the flying part, and the danger of being caught.

[Mbgile · Rating 3 out of 5]

3+

[(-&#_-+(. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good

[Remembering Ramiyan]

good

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd come across stories by Zenna Henderson's People for some time before obtaining a whole book about them. I read this edition up in Michigan soon after its publication, mostly as a bedtime book.

The concept behind the stories is of an alien people stranded on earth who are pretty much entirely human except for a variety of parapsychological gifts like esp. At the time of reading they reminded me most of the Amish or of old school Mennonites. They keep to themselves and are generally gentle and considerate. We, the earthlings, who may be related to them, are potential threats. That and, of course, their longing to return home (which, at the time, made me think of the Jews) makes them highly sympathetic.

[D.M. Dutcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a collection of short stories about extraterrestial aliens called the People who come to earth and live among us, interacting with us when fate throws us together. It's unique in that it's one of the few openly religious SF books in that time frame, and also in its style and tone. It's gentle, spiritual, and about as opposite from traditional sixties SF as could be.

The stories are a mixed bag, but they get better further on, and the People are a winsome race. You feel real sadness when they have to leave their Home, or are separated from others. Good, but different vintage SF.

[Anya · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sequel to "Pilgrimage: Book of The People." It has the same kind of framework (lots of inter-connected short stories told by the characters) and characters as the first book, but rather than tell how the People adjusted to life on Earth and found each other, this book gives more back story about how they actually got to Earth in the first place. It was just as riveting to read, although, like the first book, it ends quite abruptly and leaves you wanting more.

[Jeffrey Mclellan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one along with the other 'People' stories have a warm place in my heart. I first read them in my early teens and many decades later scenes and stories from these books still come to my mind.

Set in the turn of the previous century (1900's ?), a scattered group of refugees from another world tries to hide and survive in remote settings here on earth. Although they look entirely human, they are more advanced than us in several ways involving their 'gifts' and their morality.

[Shana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read Zenna Henderson in a really long time so it was really nice to find this book I had started at least a year or two ago, hiding under my bed. I liked most of the stories but found the overarching story a little clumsy in holding them all together. But as a collections of stories it worked well in telling the history of the People from different perspectives and characters. All together, a pretty decent work of sci-fi that made me feel very nostalgic.

[Jude]

i cannot remember the quality of the writing - but i remember reading her two People books over and over - and being outraged at the tv version. the world was simpler, i was simpler, and speculative fiction could be simpler too - or at least that's what i imagine now. these were people i cared about - that i wanted to know - that i wanted to belong to.