"Children of Power" is a welcome addition to the pitifully small number of Washington novels whose aims and abilities transcend the journalistic. Susan Richards Shreve describes an administrative city, in a cold season and at a bad time, and the tones she uses are seldom lighter than gray. Her Washington has not yet been Hollywoodized; the glamour of the salons and the empyrean mentality of Georgetown do not figure. In focusing on the children's bureaucracy as she does, two birds fall to one stone. The operational nature of the city is seen in reflection, and—more important, in the end—the tensions, strengths and depths of the parent-child relationship are explored, to profound effect.