But when he marries the mother of the two children in hopes of getting the stolen money, he happily fails. Travelling up and down the Ohio he accomplishes all by enticing middle-aged widows to marry him just before the wedding he acquires their meager fortune. His mind is contorted into a fantastic kind of Calvinist logic: He has been sent to rid the world of greed and sensual pleasure to do so he must have money. If one must have symbols, Preacher is Evil. They would weep at a broker toy but stand with the courage of a burning saint before the murder of a mother. Never quite grasping the significance of 'those green pieces of paper,' protecting his trusting five year old sister from the sinister hunter, he endures hardships as only a child could: 'the most dreadful and moving thing of all was the humbling grace with which these small ones accept their lot. It is the ten year old son that is the hero of the novel. Most of the book concerns itself with the attempts of the father's released cell mate to make the children reveal the money. The plot is simple: A condemned father tells his two children, John and Pearl, where he has hidden ten thousand stolen dollars and makes them swear they will never disclose the secret. Setting his characters in the Ohio River valley of West Virginia, he makes the great Ohio both a backdrop, and a kindly provider for the two helpless, terrified children that are his subjects. But Grubb does not comment on them through his characters, they are merely components for good story-telling. Terror, sensual love, and greed are the themes of the Night of the Hunter. And the author surprises readers hardened to literary cynicism with the rarity of a happy ending. The Night of the Hunter, Davis Grubb's first attempt at novel writing is mainly a narrative-grim, sometimes sordid, but at the same time warm and deceptively optimistic. In a literary age often characterized by intentional obscurity and rampant symbolism, it is interesting to find a first-class novel which affects neither.

The night of the hunter by davis grubb