["Pied Piper" is] a novel which piles up dramatic force with quiet realism, glows as quietly with valiant tenderness, and points a significant theme without over-emphasis. John Sidney Howard did not know what was happening to France when he consented to take Ronnie and Sheila back to England, after the invasion of the Low Countries; and when he learned that no more express trains were running, that was not worth worrying about. But at Dijon, where 5-year-old Sheila was ill, ominous tidings came on the heels of equally ominous confusion. By the time he left that once delightful town a little French girl—aged 8, like Ronnie—had been added to their company and the dreadful German drive was no secret any more. The invaders' concentration camp would mean death for an old man with a weak heart, but it was not himself Howard was thinking of as he...