The title of W. O. Mitchell's new novel alludes to the pictorial device by which converging lines, meeting at a "vanishing point" on the horizon, create the illusion of depth; and the novel itself is concerned with the lines men draw for themselves and for others in their desire to impose order, purpose, direction, on human life. That this is at best an illusory goal is the conclusion reached by The Vanishing Point, which describes the uneasy relations between an Indian band and white administrators on a reserve in the Albertan foothills. The representative of white authority is Carlyle Sinclair, a thirty-six year old widower who acts as both schoolteacher and agent on the Paradise Valley reserve…. After nine frustrating years, his efforts to bring the Stonys into the twentieth century seem to have met with at least one success: one of his pupils has passed her examinations...