Word: seeker
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...SEEKER (422 pp.)-Sinclair Lewis-Random House...
Thus far The God-Seeker reads somewhat like any other frontier novel, with Martin Arrowsmith cast as Anthony Adverse. When a revival meeting comes to Adams, however, and Aaron, aged 25, finds himself at the mourners' bench without quite knowing how he got there, the book takes on a distinctive air that makes it unusual among drum-and-petticoat books and also among Lewis' own 20 previous novels. Aaron Gadd tries to be a Christian...
...such incidents and characters The God-Seeker is compounded. Aaron comes to know and fear tough Caesar Lanark, falls half in love with Huldah Purdick (while Selene is away), argues with a suave Catholic missionary, becomes friendly with Black Wolf, an Oberlin-educated Indian who is trying to convert the whites to the beliefs of the Indians. Finally he flees with Selene from the wrath of her father, becomes a prosperous builder in St. Paul (after marrying Selene), encourages his workmen to go out on strike, and on the eve of the Civil War is somewhat surprised to find himself...
...Seeker scarcely seems more than a rough sketch for a novel. It wavers between a sympathetic view of Aaron's religious questionings and a breezy freethinker's ridicule of the pretensions of the faithful. It likewise wavers between its realistic portrait of prairie life and its satirical account of the mission to the Indians-with the Indians educated, civilized and urbane, and the whites cantankerous and benighted...
...blunt as the Reverend Mr. Chippler, missionaries as self-seeking as Balthazar Harge and theologians as long-winded as Deacon Popplewood. But there were others, too. Whatever else Americans had or lacked 100 years ago, a belief in God was fundamental to most of them. In The God-Seeker, except for Aaron Gadd, Author Lewis leaves it only to Babbitts in frock coats...