It is about a young man, MacGregor West, who searches for the reasons behind his mother's untimely death.
The San Francisco Chronicle calls MacGregor Tells the World "a story for romantics ... not a realist novel", and was critical of it as it "doesn't quite have room for all of its stories.
"[1] The Chicago Tribune found it a "charmingly off-center first novel".
[2] MacGregor Tells the World has also been reviewed by the School Library Journal.
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