SOURCE: "A Tale of Two Saints," in Chicago Tribune—Books, July 26, 1992, p. 3.

Bell is an American novelist and short story writer. In the following review of Fathers and Crows, he extols Vollmann's ability to imbue historical writing with human poignancy.

Two saints preside over Fathers and Crows, the second installment of William T. Vollmann's series of novels, Seven Dreams: Ignatius de Loyola, the soldier who became a religious zealot and founded the Jesuit order, and Kateri Tekakwitha, who as the victim of her own mortifications became the first Iroquois martyr for Christ.

The form of the novel is patterned upon Loyola's "Spiritual Exercises," the hypnagogic system of meditation that allowed the Jesuits to strengthen their faith and intention by imaginative entrance into the life of Christ. Carving a similar door in his own imagination, Vollmann relates Loyola's exercises to what he calls the Stream of Time, for which...