John Knowles, author of the highly acclaimed A Separate Peace, has now written a soap operatic historical novel about a coal baron's family in West Virginia that loses its money but discovers "things that really mean a lot more." That A Vein of Riches refers not just to the novel's coal boom setting but also to these newly plumbed human feelings and values is a point Knowles wants very badly for us not to miss….

By relentlessly spelling everything out, Knowles demonstrates little confidence in his own or in his readers' imagination. If he thinks we may miss a symbol, he identifies it for us: "Clarkson surveyed the scene, a formidable figure in his vested navy blue suit with high stiff collar, watch chain, all the symbols of business power." When waxing allegorical, Knowles not only perpetrates clichés but sometimes capitalizes them: "It seemed to him that a door, the one opening on a room known as Good Clean Fun, was closing in his life." And he even labels epiphanies: "These words broke over him with the force of an epiphany."

When reading the first few pages of a novel as trite as this, one has a perverse feeling of comfort, a sensation that at least our sensibilities are not going to be taxed. After a while though, the experience becomes embarrassing and a bit depressing.