"The Web of Time" is a science fiction novel that explores themes of time travel and its implications. The story often involves characters who become entangled in complex time-travel scenarios, where their actions in the past or future have significant consequences for their present.
The plot typically revolves around a central mystery or conflict related to time manipulation. Characters may face challenges in navigating different time periods, dealing with paradoxes, or understanding the broader impact of their actions on the timeline. The narrative explores the interplay between fate and free will, as well as the ethical and personal dilemmas that arise from tampering with time.
Reverend Robert Edward Knowles was ordained in the Presbyterian Church in 1891. As a direct result of the shock that occurred from his involvement in a train wreck in 1911, Rev. Knowles required a number of rest cures but they had little effect and in 1915, unable to carry out his duties, he resigned from the ministry and continued his literary career that started in 1905 with the publication of his first novel, St. Cuthbert’s. He was also a contributor to the Toronto Daily Star,
'The poor, if they love and are loved again, know more of life's real wealth than the deluded rich.'
A trite sentiment for sure, albeit one you could almost be persuaded to believe after reading this warmhearted coming of age story set amongst the poor yet generous God-fearing folk of largely Scottish descent in a modest American township.
Presbyterians of Scotch descent, kindly God-fearing folk, such as David Borland, genial mill owner and dispenser of home-bred philosophy, and Geordie Nickle the Scotsman, not wealthy men by any means and due to lose what little they have as the story progressed, but good men and secret philanthropists to boot:
"Men like him does more to keep faith livin' than all the colleges an' all the professors in the world; he's a beautiful argument for religion, is Geordie Nickle—he kind o' proves God, just the same as one sunbeam proves the sun,"
Harvey Simmons and his mother are the chief beneficiaries of their modest largesse, though it can't prevent the letters encroaching blindess. The title refers to the trap of hereditary alcoholism. Harvey's drunkard father absconds after causing a family tragedy in the opening chapter, and when he grows to be a man and makes a way for himself as a journalist the son has to stare down the same affliction.
By all regards I should have disliked this sentimental story, and had little sympathy for a mummy's boy whose trio of demons proved to be alcohol, the theatre and the poetry of Walt Whitman, three things I'm fairly partial to myself!
And yet I really enjoyed the book at a time when I was feeling pretty miserable about things, it's mixture of kindly, effusive characters and gentle narrative sermons came across like a successful blend between Charles Dickens and George MacDonald.