Faithful are the Wounds, May Sarton ( Norton, 1955) ****

May Sarton is a poet, essayist and novelist whose books I'd rank with Stegner's and Gardner's. This short novel set in the academic world concerns a small group of liberal professors at Harvard trying to deal with the suicide of one of their dear friends, an English professor who was the embattled liberal activist on campus during the turbulent years of McCarthyism in the 1950's. His suicide provokes questions about their own level of commitment and how they might have acted differently to prevent this tragedy.