Effective characterizations, dialogue, and transitions from one set of characters to another can't redeem [They Never Came Home, a] melodrama in which a corkscrew plot curls around coincidences and contrivances…. An unlikely story from an author whose competence with main elements of fiction promises more and better story telling to come.

Peggy Sullivan, in her review of "They Never Came Home," in School Library Journal, an appendix to Library Journal (reprinted from the April, 1969 issue of School Library Journal, published by R. R. Bowker Co./A Xerox Corporation; copyright © 1969), Vol. 15, No. 8, April, 1969, p. 126.