It is impossible to read anything of Taylor Caldwell's without being reminded of the old gag, "He don't sing good, but he sings loud." Miss Caldwell doesn't write well, to be sure—but her books are infused with a sort of wild, anything-goes vitality which can hardly be ascribed to Henry James. Not that "The Sound of Thunder" is a good book. It isn't. But Miss Caldwell has managed to stay sufficiently within the bounds of educated standards to make the reader feel rewarded for panting after her as she free-wheels through this long, complicated chronicle.

The central character is Edward Enger, a hard worker who was sent to help in his father's delicatessen at 14 so that his three brothers and one sister—the geniuses—could become, respectively, a pianist, a painter, a writer and a theatrical producer. That, at least, was his mother's idea, but it didn't...