Lady Moses

""I could lie down in the hammock of his words,"" muses Jacinta Louise Buttercup Moses about her father's stories of Africa, and the same can be said of Roy's dazzling debut, an enchanting story about a woman whose life is fraught with disaster and blessed by love. Born to a haughty white British actress and an African writer, Jacinta enjoys an idyllic 1950s childhood in South London--she barely notices her family's poverty--until her father suddenly dies, and her life becomes frightening and dangerous. By the time she reaches adolescence, Jacinta has been sexually abused by a neighbor, has witnessed her friend's death in a terrible accident and has been sent to a foster home while her mother recovers from a breakdown. But witty, defiant Jacinta survives and, in the process, wins our sympathy. At 24, she is whisked to Virginia by theatrical American novelist Emmanuel Fox III, who proposes on bended knee an hour after they meet. Troubled from the start, their relationship is plagued by the birth of a handicapped daughter and by Manny's jealousy when Jacinta succeeds as a poet, but a pilgrimage to West Africa enables Jacinta to reclaim her father's spirit and to recognize her own fortitude. Roy handles her complex plot with impressive authority as she tackles themes of racial identity, mental illness and female self-reliance. Her characters are rendered with depth; headstrong, selfish, wise and tender, they make mistakes, have regrets and learn from them. And Roy's deft prose gracefully expresses their humor, their pain and their moments of joy and transcendence. Author tour. (Feb.) FYI: Lady Moses is the first debut novel to be published by Harper's new imprint, Harper Flamingo. Roy won the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize for her 1995 collection of poems, The Humming Birds.