Taylor Caldwell is an angry woman. She tells us so in a candid foreword to her curious new novel ["The Listener"]. Man does not need a new religion, she says. He does not require better bombs and missiles. He does not have to travel to the moon. What he really needs is someone to listen to his hurts and bewilderments. Of course, that Someone is the not very mysterious "Listener" of her book.

The role of "The Listener" is dramatized in fifteen chapters that successively feature troubled "Souls," each numbered and tagged, as, for example, Soul One, The Confessed; Soul Two, the Underprivileged; Soul Three, The Despised and Rejected. A troubled Soul repairs to a two-room marble sanctuary that is open to the public. Once there, the Soul begins to talk. In every instance, the supplicants receive unspoken guidance or undergo sudden conversions that produce admirably ethical solutions...