Quaker Witness

Elizabeth Elliot, a widow and clerk of the Quaker Meeting House in Cambridge, Mass., was introduced in the quietly effective novel Quaker Silence . Near the beginning of this return engagement, Elizabeth listens to the anguished outpourings of a young woman Ph.D. student in paleontology at Harvard. Janet Stevens has endured escalating sexual harassment from her male faculty advisor. Unable to put up with it any longer, she has filed a complaint at the university and is sure her hopes of a career in science are over. When the professor is murdered in his lab, Janet becomes the prime suspect. Evidence mounts against her, and Elizabeth, with the help of a friend who is a secretary in the paleontology department, begins her own investigations. Though the dialogue is sometimes slightly stilted, Allen delivers a thoughtful and suspenseful story that examines issues of personal morality and social responsibility, even as it exposes the ambition and ruthlessness depicted as rampant in Harvard's hallowed labs and administration buildings. Elizabeth, who questions her own motives while probing the actions of others, is a fully dimensioned, appealing heroine. Literary Guild selection. (Nov.)