Re-birth

By John Wyndham

Hundreds of years or more after a devastating nuclear war, humans are struggling to survive, living on the fringes of land far enough from the blast sites to maintain life.
A quaint religion has sprung up among these people, a religion based on Christianity but twisted. For these people the greatest sin is to be different, to be a mutant. So mutated crops, farm animals, even humans re dealt with harshly. The animals and crops are destroyed by fire and the human mutants are sterilized and cast out to live in the marginal land bordering the badlands where life is a struggle just to survive. For these people living right means having no mutant crops, no mutant animals, and especially no mutant children. For the woman who three times bears a mutant baby is, like her offspring, sterilized and cast out. Any deviation from the standard is looked upon as sin.
Into this straight-laced society are born several children who look perfectly normal. But they are different. They are telepathic. They can't hear normal people but they can hear each other and communicate over long distances.
Even from the time they are little, they know they must keep their ability hidden. But eventually, inevitably, their secret is exposed and some of them are forced to flee. The situation looks hopeless. But among their number is a young girl who is such a strong telepath she is able to summon help from halfway around the world.

This was an interesting story at the beginning as the main character David, who at the start of the story is just a little boy, learns to cope with his gift and keep himself and his friends safe from their enemies and especially from his own implacable and self-righteous parents. The story got to be less interesting once the character of the powerful telepath is introduced and it often degenerated into a lecture about the stupidity of ordinary humans and the inevitability of their replacement by a better breed of humans, namely the telepaths.