As in his earlier novels, Powers sustains several narrative strands in Operation Wandering Soul. The story of Linda Espera's romance with Richard Kraft becomes the convincing pretext for Kraft's eventual change in attitude toward his patients and, indeed, toward life.

Each child in the novel involves a narrative strand, yet these are all part of the broader narrative fiber that deals with them as members of a group. The group story is skillfully connected to the regularly interspersed interchapters, each offering a historic account of major historical events relating to children.

These accounts, all of them gracefully interspersed as a part of Linda Espera's story-telling, cover a broad chronological range. Notable among them is King Herod's massacre of the innocents in early Christian times. A reproduction of Peter Brueghel the Elder's renowned depiction of this massacre, painted in 1565, appears on the book's dust jacket. The stories told in...