If a novel may be described as an education in people, problems and places, Mr. Hamner has a claim to being a good teacher [with "Fifty Roads to Town"]. Not everyone will want to sit in on a demonstration of life among the Holy Rollers in a small Virginia mountain town, of course, but those who do will find their sympathies as well as their interest engaged. The book is picturesque in its psychological oddities and setting. But it does not so lose itself in hillbilly comedy and terror as to alienate the reader's sense of compassion. Indeed, it goes to the sorrowful core of the human condition.

Charles Lee, "Mountain Preacher," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1953 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), October 11, 1953, p. 28.