Some books tells stories of wise men and women. Some are themselves books of wisdom. Some of these are subtle and understated. I think that “The Face of Abraham Candle” by Bruce Clements (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969) fits all three of these descriptions.

Published as a novel for adolescents, it tells the story of Abraham Candle, a young lad growing up in and around Silverton, Colorado in 1894. If I were still teaching eighth graders, I would be tempted to read it aloud to them, a few pages a day. More than that and they would undoubtedly get restless, for this is a story more elusive and delicate than they would be accustomed to. Here is the way I would introduce it to them before I began my reading of the first chapter.

“Some people are smart or intelligent. Some are knowledgeable. Some are shrewd or sly. And some are wise. What’s the difference?”

“Here are some of the characters you are gonna meet in the story I’m about to begin reading. I wonder which ones you predict will be intelligent, knowledgeable, sly, or wise.

“Mrs. Stent is a widow with three young children she must raise on her own.”

“Mr. Malone is interested in finding and preserving Native American artifacts from caves in the area. He may also be interested in Mrs. Stent.

“Abraham Candle is an orphan boy boarding with Mrs. Stent, helping her take care of her younger children. Mr. Malone needs his help in exploring the caves.

“Mr. Green is a drunk but he knows the territory, so he is taken on as a partner in the expedition.

“Which one do you expect to be intelligent? knowledgeable? shrewd or sly? wise? Let’s read the book and find out.”

Abraham’s father having died just a year and a half ago, he misses him still, grieves for him, and remembers in detail the strange, enigmatic stories he told. (Seven of these stories are repeated verbatim within the novel.) Abraham wants to be a story-teller himself. Near the beginning of the book, we hear Abraham telling the Stent children a story; his hero is the Great MacGregor, the Lone Hero of Colorado.” He’s a hero on the order of the Lone Ranger or Batman or some other Hollywood superstar; Abraham struggles to come up with adventures worthy of his character and spell-binding to the children.

But right away, we learn that Abraham has other problems on his mind. Fatherless and alone, he knows it’s time for him to grow into manhood himself. “I’ll go someplace else,” he tells himself. “It’s time. Inside a week, maybe tomorrow or the next day, I’ll be gone. Maybe Kansas. Or maybe I’ll go to the sea.” He’s tired of this household, of taking care of little children. He’s ready for an adventure of his own.

But even more important, he knows he wants to live up to his father’s vision for him. “Abraham, you’re a climber,” he father had said. “If you couldn’t find a hill to climb up, you’d find a hole to climb down.” And that’s exactly what Abraham decides to do; it’s the way he spends his time during most of the novel, climbing down into caves for Mr. Malone, searching for artifacts that can be sold in Denver for a small fortune, crawling into dark, dank holes and exploring large caverns, which Mr. Green guides him to, some of which he discovers on his own. He works hard, escapes some dangers, and learns a lot—about the caves and their former inhabitants, about Mr. Malone and Mr. Green and about himself. That’s the gist of the novel. By the end, he’s ready to make a decision about his future. Will it be Kansas, or the sea, or Silverton?

But just as important as Abraham’s own story, probably even more important, are the stories he remembers from his father, some that he passes along to others, most that he simply recalls for himself. One is about Richard, who is going to visit his brother in town, so he puts his Soul in his right shoe. You don’t want to go into town without your Soul. “That’s not your Soul,” his brother tells him. “That’s just a rock.” Where Richard finds his Soul and how, and what his brother thinks about all this: that’s what the little story is all about. Richard leaves his brother and goes home barefoot, expecting to find his Soul waiting for him there on the kitchen stove. “That’s the end of the story.”

But each story, in its own peculiar way, develops the theme of the novel and helps Abraham find out who he is. He hopes to become more like his father.

To answer the question I will have raised with my students, the key story is a longer one, about a farmer and his son Jacob and Jacob’s encounter with a hermit and with their suspicious neighbors. “This hermit had a great reputation for wisdom. It was said that whoever brought a question up the mountain would come down wiser, no matter what the question was.” Whether the hermit turns out to be wise, or merely sly, that is the question. And whether Jacob becomes more knowledgeable with his questions, or maybe wiser, that is the question behind the question. An enigmatic story.

In the very first chapter, Abraham is taking care of Jane Stent, one of his landlady’s young children; he’s teaching her to play blackjack, as his father taught him. He happens to catch sight of himself in a mirror. “It wasn’t a bad-looking face. It was open, honest, and even intelligent. But it was a young face, younger than he wanted it to be. And it never seemed to get older. That’s why he wanted to go away, not just to get out of his house, or find something exciting to do, or make money, but to give his face a chance to change. Maybe, if he went away, it would change for the better. Maybe it would get to look more like his father’s face.”

Can an intelligent face become a wiser face? That’s ultimately the question. It’s not an easy question, and the answer suggested by Abraham’s experience in the rest of the book is not an easy answer to decipher. Does the book have at least one wise character? Is it a book of wisdom? Certainly, it is somewhat subtle and oblique. But I think it rewards readers’ efforts to understand.