Not Too Narrow... Not Too Deep by Richard Sale

One of my favorite novels, this is both a wracking adventure at sea and a story of transformation; the miracles that come from a call to be selfless. This 1936 rarity should be as well known as classics by Sale's contemporaries Horace McCoy and Nathanael West.

Convict Henry Moll arranges for ten men to escape the horrors of a French Guiana penal colony: Pennington, a tubercular professor sentenced for espionage; Benet, a degenerate child rapist; Weiner, a German seditionist; Flaubert, a pathological murderer they call insane; Telez, a Spanish smuggler; DuFond, a thief willing to be abused; Verne, a sadistic murderer; Dunning, a bigamist; and our narrator, Doctor LaSalle, accused of murder. But there is also an uninvited eleventh man whom no one knows, named Jean Cambreau. It is two days through the jungle to the beach where a hired boat awaits. Many times there is no boat, the men robbed and killed outright by traffickers. One man dies in the jungle; another is struck by a deadly fer-de-lance. Verne takes charge of the 22-foot sloop, over the protest of Weiner, a natural dictator. The men face a harrowing journey through gales and thirty-foot waves in the blackest night ever seen, losing food and clean water overboard, as well as another man. LaSalle learns Cambreau has a prescient outlook on their survival, a calming spiritual presence he claims all men can achieve. There is something more to man than their bodily injuries. You lose judgment and fear when you realize the spirit is eternal; the vital force which marks him alive. Men who think of themselves and not of others will not proceed far on their journey. Word of the convicts' escape has already spread when they arrive in Port of Spain, followed by talk of miracles through the village, the sick and injured healed. LaSalle realizes he has been spared for a purpose if he has the courage to be of service to others.

This parable of redemption may appear heavy-handed and steers close to making Cambreau an angelic savior, but the character maintains that any man who sees others as a whole being can work wonders. To me, this novel is a timeless classic.

Richard Sale was only twenty-five when he wrote this, his first novel. He became a screenwriter (The French Line 1954) and film director (Gentlemen Marry Brunettes 1955). Not Too Narrow Not Too Deep was filmed in 1940 as the classic Strange Cargo with Clark Gable and Joan Crawford, altering the tale to include Joan on the boat.

My copy is an Armed Services Edition, a small pocket-sized paperback distributed overseas for the Army and Navy by the Council of Books in Wartime.

1936 / Armed Services Edition Paperback / 234 pages

My other reviews for Richard Sale:

Home Is The Hangman

Beam To Brazil