O Human Child

by Walter Donway

Ashlyn Tate seems a woman of more than human beauty--almost enchanted. Stranger still, her daughter, Alena, is only 12--or is supposed to be--but is already arresting in her sensual allure.

That is only the very beginning of what Jan and Victoria DeVries discover when they begin their summer on a rented farm in the wild Catskill Mountains with their daughter, Betsy--just Alena's age (or is she?)--and Freddy, the toddler with the "elfin" look of Williams Syndrome.

When Alena gets a look at Freddy, and murmurs, "He is the most beautiful child I have ever seen," the first slight shadow passes across the sun. From then on, the shadows of the beautiful, dark Catskill Mountains become deeper, more mysterious, more menacing--even as Jan, Victoria, and the kids fall in love with sunny meadows, the horses...

And you almost hear, from the dark spruce forest, the eerie lines of poet William Butler Yeats: "Come away! O human child..."

But enchantment is as irresistible as it is dangerous. When Jan--the artist who looks like the lanky, handsome cowboy he once was--meets Ashlyn, Victoria has big problems with it.

But there isn't time to worry about that. Because suddenly Freddy, on a perfect afternoon, goes missing. And the terror lurking in the majestic gorges, hidden lakes, and ancient trails that begin almost at their backyard has only begun to reach out for them.

If only Jan and Victoria could believe what that danger really is.

Genres: Fantasy

268 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

In 1998, famous "New York Times" political columnist and expert commentator on language, William Safire, then also a Dana Foundation trustee, tapped Walter Donway to create and edit "Cerebrum: The Dana Forum on Brain Science"—now in its 19th year. Safire explained to the Foundation’s financial vice president, Burton Mirksy, “He’s a wordsmith.” And then, in typical Safire fashion, cracked, “And he’s also a Right-winger!”

Far more than a “Right-winger,” he was a genuine intellectual drawn to the powerful philosophical revolution launched by Ayn Rand with her novel, "Atlas Shrugged," and a dozen books on epistemology (the theory of knowledge), ethics, politics, and esthetics that followed until her death in 1982.

Her philosophy of “Objectivism,” primarily a historic defense of reason, individualism, and laissez faire capitalism, brought into existence the modern libertarian movement and Libertarian Party politics. Rand herself had no patience with any libertarian politics not rooted in the fundamentals of philosophy, including the relationship between reason, inalienable individual rights, and capitalism.

Few Presidential candidates of any party met Rand’s stern test of an advocacy of capitalism rooted in reason and individual rights. And yet, against the outright socialist, redistributionist, egalitarian-hippie politics of Sen. George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate, she threw her support behind Richard Nixon—a clear-eyed calculated choice among available options. Donway (“rather dutifully,” he says) became in-volved in the Nixon campaign in 1968 and again in 1972.

Looking back, he comments: “This was Boston during the anti-war movement and student re-bellion—the Black Liberation Army and middle-class New Left kids were gunning down bank guards. So, when I held up my Nixon poster, guys came over, grabbed my collar, and wanted to fight.”

Much later, his support of Nixon, which Donway saw as minor in is life, became the basis of bonding with Safire, who worked for Nixon in both campaigns, became chief Nixon speech writer along with Patrick Buchanan, and, as he commented later, “Managed to stay out of jail.” He did more than that, becoming the showcase Libertarian among New York Times columnists—but soon an indispensable voice in politics and, in his “On Language” column in the Sunday Magazine, the country’s best-known language “maven”—his favored term for it.

By then, Donway had published dozens of articles and essays for publications receptive to the libertarian point of view, including as a columnist for "Private Practice," journal of the Congress of County Medical Societies, and "Human Events," the renowned feisty Washington, D.C., weekly paper of conservative opinion edited by Tom Winters. At that time, "Human Events" was almost alone on the media scene as a critic of liberal-leftism and advocate of capitalism. At the same time, though, he published the lead op-ed article in "Wall Street Journal" “In Defense of Decades of Greed,” solicited by WSJ editorial page editor, Robert Bartley.

When accused of “not looking at the other side,” Donway laughs and points out that all his professional positions, as an executive at Brown University, the Commonwealth Fund (the country’s earliest major foundation devoted to experimentation with health care programs and medical education), and the Dana Foundation were with “certified East Coast Liberal institutions.” He says, “from 1969 until my retirement in 2004, I was a fixture of the Liberal-Left intellectual bureaucracy. Don’t tell me I need to be exposed to that viewpoint!”

In effect, however, he found nothing to refute—or even seriously challenge—the philosophy of Objectivism. The real reform that called to him was of Objectivism itself, which had become cultish, intolerant, and closed to change. It was not unusual—closer to typical—for a powerful new philosophy that set itself against the verities, assumptions, and dogmas of its time. In

Reviews

[Quasimode]

I don't remember how I got introduced to this book - likely a friend's recommendation on Faceplant - but as a big, big fan of an '80s-era publication on free speech co-written by philosopher David Kelley and Roger Donway (presumably Walter's brother, and of similar philosophical pedigree,) this was immediately intriguing to me.

Victorian Erotica is a genre with which I've had exactly zero prior exposure, but I have what you could call extensive exposure to erotica of the Anaïs Nin variety. My older sis was - and presumably still is - a fan of Nin, and since Nin's books were on her bookshelf through my adolescence during the '70s and '80s, I was able to imbibe deeply.

Donway's tale is significantly less explicit than Nin (which is both a negative and a positive, depending on how you look at it,) but the story itself makes up for what the book lacks in its presumed sensuality. Granted, it's arguable that Nin nudged uncomfortably close to Penthouse Forum-caliber porn, but to live up to the classification of "erotica" this story needed far more in the direction of "steamy" than what it contains.

The tryst that develops between Jan and his seductive neighbor Ashlyn amid mysterious goings-on is titillating, but is mostly tepid and peripheral, owing to the fact that neither character has the chance to develop very deeply before they get involved. More intriguing are the strange character of her free-spirited daughter Alena (a.k.a. Allie,) and the secret world that unfolds when Jan discovers the truth behind the neighboring family. Unfortunately, that mystical element too falls short of what it could have been.

"O Human Child" is an interesting story, but I kept getting the impression that Donway was pulling his punches on both the erotica and fantasy elements of the book. I wanted more, basically, on both of those elements, also on character development and on plotting, and in context of Romantic Fiction in particular, I wanted much more in the way of moral dilemmas as pivot-points in the plot. There isn't much that actually happens in this novel, and precious little of it requires agonizing choices among principle characters.

The fantastic race that was revealed in the novel remain as distant, inscrutable specters rather than actual characters; the sexuality is not nearly pronounced enough to place the story into the genre of erotica; the plot lacked complexity; and on characterization, as a reader I wasn't particularly invested in either Jan or Victoria, and we don't really get much information of any depth about Allie, Ashlyn, or Ashlyn's husband Kenneth.

So classify this as "good, not great." But I will happily sample Donway's subsequent novels.

[Liberum Latine]

Oh dear me. There's a good six pages of cruft to get through before the book starts, not including a table of contents without hyperlinks. The writer also needs to rely on more than just a spellchecker. Stonewall is a either a place and should be capitalized, or a verb, as in "to stonewall someone." A stone wall is a thing. The first character introduced is both sitting and then walking, in the same paragraph. Gave up.

[Molly Moblo Perusse]

I thoroughly enjoyed O Human Child. A young couple's dream summer near the Catskill mountains becomes more of a nightmare when their disabled child disappears one day and to find him they enlist the help of their only neighbors who aren't who they really appear to be. A quick enjoyable fantastical read.

[D.k. Halling]

Lush and mesmerizing tale. The reader is entranced as the hero and his family are swept up in this seemingly impossible mystery. A true page-turner, which rarely happens for me. I could not put it down. Prepare to have your disbelief suspended. More, please, Mr. Donway!