Angels in a Harsh World

Initially self-published, this New Age fable was originally targeted for the followers of California theosophist Bradley (The Significance of the One). In 1933, Boston socialite Haley Olsten travels to India for the wedding of a friend to a young British officer and, after a dockside misadventure in Ceylon, falls for the son of the British governor. Before the ill-starred sweethearts can avow their love, an evil maharajah enslaves Haley through opiate addiction. She escapes and is found near death by a wise old man named J., the first of two mysterious angels who lead Haley across the Himalayas, teach her to conjure food literally out of thin air and initiate her into the secrets of ""Beingness"": ""The great mystery that we must all learn one day is that love is a great force."" Armed with this profound twaddle (and the blessing of a bespectacled, loinclothed guru named Mohandas), she travels to Nazi Germany in 1936 to keep the evil maharaja from passing his dark secrets to Hitler's henchmen, then escapes across the Channel with her true love, ""leaving Germany and its future in the capable hands of destiny."" Although Haley writes that his ""tales are factual,"" one must suspend both critical judgment and disbelief to swallow this hokey dose of ""spiritual beingness."" Author tour. (Feb.) FYI: Putnam reports that the first edition of Angels in a Harsh World sold 36,000 copies. Bradley is the great-grandson of Ben Hur author Lew Wallace.