The Pirate Review - Ingathering: The Complete People Stories

Here's a book full of magical Persuasions and Designs

It didn't take long for me to figure out that my family was different. I came from a family of six children in an area where Zero Population Growth was an overwhelmingly popular concept. My dad didn't go to an office every day like other dads; he created ads and artwork in his drawing room. We three oldest kids taught ourselves how to read before we hit kindergarten. Basically, we just didn't fit in.

By the time I was fourteen, I'd already gleaned most of the good titles from what seemed like every kidlit and young adult book list known to mankind. I came to the conclusion that the only way I was going to find some new reading material would be to work my way methodically through the fiction section of the high school library, so that's what I did.

About halfway through the H section, I came across a slim paperback with decidedly bizarre cover art—a picture of a Stetson-hatted farmer and his wife emerging from a flying saucer. The name of the book was Pilgrimage: The Book of the People and the author was Zenna Henderson. The flying saucer art meant it had to be science fiction, a genre I usually avoided. My brothers read a lot of hard SF, which I thought placed too much emphasis on technology and not enough on character development. But I'd already committed to scouring through all the fiction, so I sighed and opened the book.

Well, I got stuck in the H section for a long time. Pilgrimage seemed to have been written just for me, a lonely, isolated teenager with no sense of fitting in anywhere. It was the kind of book I would have written at the time if I'd had any ability—a book about ordinary-looking people who came from another world, people who could fly and communicate with thoughts and heal bodies and minds, people who carefully concealed their marvelous differences from outsiders, people whose talents brought them both joy and heartbreak. The weird cover art embarrassed me to the point that I couldn't check it out of the library, so I'd sneak in and read as much as I could during lunch hour. I wanted more.

And there was more, but it wasn't easy to find. Both Pilgrimage: The Book of the People and The People: No Different Flesh were story collections of the People, but they were very out of print. After reading and cherishing these books in the school library, I went on a long and mostly fruitless search to see if I could find used copies for my own collection.

The trouble with Zenna Henderson's stories, it seems, is that many of her readers were affected by her writing the same way I was—believing on some level that the stories were written especially for them. As a result, although they loved the People stories, they kept them secret and rarely recommended them to others. I think this sense of secrecy is one of the primary reasons why all Mrs. Henderson's original books are out of print now.

The one book still in print was actually compiled after Mrs. Henderson's death. It's called Ingathering: The Complete People Stories and it was compiled by the New England Science Fiction Association in 1995. This hefty hardback contains every known People story in existence, including a previously unpublished story called "Michal Without."

Many of Henderson's characters are teachers—not all that surprising, since Mrs. Henderson taught grade school herself for years. Her real-life experience let her write honest depictions of teachers, both good and bad, throughout her stories. (I bought this book for my mother, herself a grade school teacher, several years ago; it was the first science fiction she read from cover to cover.)

There's a reason why Mrs. Henderson called these beings simply "the People." I never thought of them as aliens, despite the clear explanation that they come from another world and have unusual talents. They have the same joys and sorrows, the same problems and failings, the same desire to fit in, even the same beliefs we do (the Power, the Presence and the Name bear close resemblance to Judeo-Christian tradition, and many of the short story titles are taken directly from Biblical narratives). The People harbor a warm racial memory of their original world, a lost jewel called simply "the Home," and even within their own gathered communities they are aware of their gypsy status as strangers in a strange land. Yet despite their yearning for the Home, they are also clearly products of their adopted planet; they love the beauty of Earth and their fellow human beings.

There are few down sides to Henderson's writing. As I've mentioned, her subject matter can be intensely personal—to the point where it slides under the skin of sensitive readers. Her prose style—especially when dealing with the none-too-carefully concealed inner torment of some of her characters—gets decidedly overblown in places, and not all the stories are equally strong in quality. But for all that, Mrs. Henderson still brewed a potent draught of wonder in her writing, just as powerful today as it was when her stories were first published over forty years ago. She even passes the read-aloud test: last night I read the first two stories out loud to my nieces, just getting into junior high. Yes, they were mesmerised by the stories—but so was their grandmother, quietly eavesdropping in the kitchen.

If you've felt alone, odd, awkward in the crowd—if you have unusual talents of any stripe—if you've tried to conceal some part of yourself from others—if, in short, you know with smarting certainty that you're different—then you need to read Zenna Henderson's People stories. Entering Ingathering is like finding family you never knew you had. It's like coming Home.