Pearl Luke spends most of her novel trying to suggest how a rural schoolteacher born as Mabel Edith Rowbotham might have become the notorious Madame Zee. There are the visions that begin after her sister's death in childhood, her growing interest in theosophy and Madame Blavatsky, the prejudice she encounters in the teaching world, and disillusionment with her marriage. We only get to her actual encounter with Brother XII and his disciples (by far the most fully-realized part of the novel) in the last hundred pages.

Unfortunately, in the long build-up to the main event, there are too many unanswered questions, too many implausible scenes, too many indistinguishable characters who fail to sustain our interest. Luke has done her research meticulously (as she mentions in her afterword) and there are some interesting forays into the world of spiritualism, clairvoyance, and other manifestations of the occult, but overall the story isn't historically plausible.

When free-spirit Mabel is booted out of one school for wanting to teach about Hanukkah, when she practices mindfulness and meditation, when she becomes a healer and naturopath, dispensing herbal remedies at Cedar-by-the Sea, it's more new age political correctness we're hearing than 1920s sensibility.

In the Brother XII section, Luke does come up with some intriguing speculations about Madame Zee's motivations, and she is adept at exploring her heroine's ambivalence, healthy scepticism alternating with irresistible attraction to her chosen guru. In the end though, it is the evil character described in Oliphant's book I will remember as the authentic Madame Zee, not the compassionate, misunderstood psychic Luke has created here. 0-0020-0513-1

[BCBW 2006]