[Divine Disobedience is] a remarkable book, a book that achieves the near-impossible by being passionate, compassionate, and dispassionate….

It is, to be sure, a book of profiles of Catholic radicals who, in the spirit of Saint Paul, have been sent to prison often, menaced by their "so-called brothers." (p. 32)

The lives and thoughts of these men and women, their militant, nonviolent activism …, is presented in a marvelously colorful tapestry of profiles, a modern Passion Play re-enacting the lives of the early Christians. In her deft, rapid, paradoxically rich but austere prose, Francine Gray reveals herself as a fresh, important new talent in American letters.

But there is much more to Francine Gray and to her book than talent and the esthetic joy of reading so thrilling a romance and so controversial an account of conflict waged by a legion of Biblical characters in turtlenecks and peace insignia. Francine Gray is herself a militant, radical lay Catholic, active in the fight against war, poverty, racism, and repression. Like Bernanos she believes the real problem of our day is not the increase of rebels but of docile, self-repressed citizens.

Never intruding herself into her story, with a quick pen and unfailing ear—a reporter with perfect pitch for dialogue—she reproduces the words and thoughts of her characters, whose cool, hip language makes the most abstruse theological and philosophical analysis light, lucid, and meaningful. This is a book of and for times of crisis, yet a book for all seasons; it is not only a book for Catholics, but for all who seek to reconcile faith and reason, God and Caesar, for believers and nonbelievers. (pp. 32-3)

Francine Gray carries forward the thinking of Voltaire, who wrote that "Revolutions are caused by those who try to stop them." As a writer, she is in the best tradition of Rebecca West, Rachel Carson, and Janet Flanner. It will be interesting to see what this bright new talent will do when she writes on subjects not so close to her own heart, although I suspect there are no such subjects for a Francine Gray. (p. 41)