Star Family by Theresa Crater – A Visionary Fiction Alliance Book Review by Victor Smith

A fascinating novel that is also an education in a little known esoteric religion

I grew up in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, notorious for its unusual religious communities, heard of Moravian College in neighboring Bethlehem, but never gave the name a second thought even though I went on to study and write about most of the planet’s religions in one form or another. I did encounter several references to the Moravians in Marsha Keith Schuchard’s William Blake’s Sexual Path to Spiritual Vision, but they failed to impact my consciousness in a book otherwise packed with intriguing material.

I’d read another of Ms. Crater’s novel and enjoyed it, so when I saw The Star Family featured in a post on the Visionary Fiction Alliance website, I purchase it and relished every minute reading it, knowing that the author had done her homework, digging through the history and living in/travelling to the locations featured in the book. Learning about the 15th-century Moravian movement, especially its fascinating esoteric core, without being distracted from the storyline was an unexpected bonus, and a literary skill worth noting. As someone who devours material that digs enough into man’s perennial attraction towards those deep perennial truths that have been known to transform seekers in every age and place, I thoroughly enjoy discovering a previously unnoticed example of the Hidden Knowledge–hidden, in my opinion, only until one opens their eyes wide enough to see. If such revelations can be accomplished in novel form that goes down easy, all for the better.