In I Heard the Owl Call My Name a dying Anglican vicar is sent to minister to some British Columbian Indians, and to be made the occasion of many an easy reflection on how much he has got to learn to become truly Christian, as they are. The novel goes in for the sort of religiosity common to ages of unbelief. This coyly tear-jerking administration for the simpler life has already earned itself the screenplay fictions like this are usually designed to become. (p. 163)

Valentine Cunningham, "Unsmiling," in New Statesman (© 1974 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. 88, No. 2263, August 2, 1974, p. 163.

[In I Heard the Owl Call My Name, Mark] meets the simple natural life of an unsophisticated people—a people however who have their own problems and difficulties, pin-pointed in particular by the yearning of the younger generation for a different kind of life and a new environment...