A romance of the Icarian settlement on the Mississippi river: a small body of French colonists with communistic views who had been brought to America by Pere Cabet; the story opens in 1856, when most of them were thoroughly tired of him. . . . But the schisms of the commune pale in interest beside the affairs of the American abolitionists who come into the story. … ln one chapter Robert Channing is carrying runaway slaves to safety; in the next Pere Cabet is preaching his flock into rebellion. The petty affairs of the Icarians and the quarrel that shall shake the states run side by side. Their separate currents meet in the loves of Robert and Diane.”
– Book Review Digest