The Damned

Wow! My first MacDonald book, and I was hardly expecting it to be so good. His writing is a couple of notches above most anyone else. I just finished a William Campbell Gault book, for instance, and while he writes smoothly and entertainingly, his characters are cardboard. MacDonald creates real people with serious depth and emotions going on inside. His only fault is in occasional overwriting when he tries to be poetic -- but most of the time he succeeds in that also. Exciting to think that there are so many of his books left to read. I have read that his early non-Travis McGee novels are the best, and perhaps this is an example of that. But as good as this one is, it is difficult to think of anything he writes being bad.

A ferry that has a hard time crossing a river is the device triggering an accidental assembly of people. The temporary interweaving of their lives becomes the story.
There is the man who has impulsively taken a woman to Mexico for an interval of self indulgence. Now he regrets it worrying about how he may have hurt his wife and family.
The is the newly wed couple returning from their honeymoon.. the delay reveals to both of them that their Marie has been a mistake. There is the rawboned Texan entering a time of personal maturity who helps everyone as best he can, who in the process falls in love and is forced by circumstances to acknowledge time is needed to develop that love.
There are twin girls, actresses working with an older show more showman who decide to abandon acting as a career while he ignores symptoms of heart disease probably foreshadowing impending death.
There is the wheeler dealer fleeing his involvement in the death of a lover and her boyfriend a matador.
Finally there is the Mexican man whose work it is to facilitate the ferry crossing. He has a simple fulfilling life with a happy wife and family.
MacDonald's way of saying the proper study of mankind is man. Ironic that thirty years later he would die of heart disease. show less

The action takes place mostly in Mexico, and this was one of JDM's first attempts at the novel form published.