I Heard the Owl Call My Name, by Margaret Craven

I Heard the Owl Call My Name

Anyone who works in a bookstore will notice fairly early on that there are a handful of books that routinely invite commentary by browsers who are shopping with friends. In my experience, one book that stops people in their tracks on a fairly regular basis is I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven.

Some people stop to sneer at it (often adding comments of having had it crammed down their throats by a loathsome teacher). But most people recommend it to their companions who haven’t read it yet – and if their friend balks at buying it, a surprising number of people buy it themselves and hand it over as a gift on the spot. Very few books inspire people to shell out and hand over like that, but I’ve seen this happen again and again, and involving an astonishing variety of people – all of them feeling it important to share this book, for whatever reason, even if it costs them cold, hard cash.

In my mind, the opposing camps have started sorting themselves out. The people who hate this book tend to see it as simplistic and naïve and maudlin, I think. The people who love this book see it as very deep and only deceptively simple, I think. Some people who like it describe it as a parable. Others just like the story without going off on philosophical tangents.

The storyline is quite simple. A young minister is sent by his superiors to a remote Indian village, and then falls ill. How people respond to his failing health is much of what the book is about.

This title has been printed and reprinted for decades now and so there are many used copies floating about for sale. But it is still in print, if you are the sort who prefers a new copy. The Dell mass market paperback edition has an ISBN of 0440343690.