The Wooden Shepherdess

The Wooden Shepherdess is the sequel to The Fox in the Attic, and the second volume of Richard Hughes’s monumental historical fiction, “The Human Predicament.” It opens with Hughes’s hero Augustine in prohibition era America, where he is a bemused onlooker and an increasingly fascinated participant in a country intoxicated with sex, violence, and booze. In brilliant cinematic style, the book then moves to Germany, where the Nazi Party is gradually gaining in power; to the slums, mining town...