SOURCE: “Witnesses and Catholics,” in Commonweal, Vol. CV, No. 25, December 22, 1978, pp. 818–19.

In the following review, Miles contends that although Harrison was extremely harsh in her portrayal of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Visions of Glory, she never condescends to them.

How can people live like that?” the bluestocking asks of the slum. “How can people think like that?” the religious bluestocking, believing or unbelieving, asks of a group like Jehovah's Witnesses. They refuse blood transfusions. They insult the flag. They decry the Vatican as the fountain of evil. They resist the draft without condemning the war. Most of all, they believe in Armageddon, the imminent and violent End of the World. How can people think like that?

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, feature writer for Esquire, Ms., Saturday Review, New Republic, and others knows how they can. She was one of them for eleven years, from 1944 to 1955, converted at the age...