cover image From the Black Hills

From the Black Hills

Judy Troy. Random House (NY), $23.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-375-50230-9

Narrowing her canvas from the mix of sassy, lovelorn protagonists in the praised West of Venus, but deepening her character portrayal and atmospheric mood, Troy has written a restrained but powerful coming-of-age story distinguished by a remarkable empathy for ordinary people caught in the crosshairs of tragedy. During the hot summer before Mike Newlin is to leave for college, his father, Glenn, a depressed social misfit and inadequate parent, kills his receptionist/lover and flees their small town of Wheatley, N.D. As she sensitively explores Mike's reaction to the event, Troy captures both the particular alienation of adolescence and Mike's own growing acknowledgment that he has inherited his father's defensive, untrusting, secretive personality. His feelings about his father's transgressive behavior are clouded by his own lust for Lee-Ann Schofield, the wife of the farm owner where he does chores, and his guilt in betraying his tender, vulnerable girlfriend, Donetta Rush. As his father's disappearance extends into the fall, Mike begins his freshman year at the university and falls into a classic depression. Troy plumbs Mike's emotional turmoil so deftly that the pace of this meditative novel never flags. Then she delivers another shock that adds adrenaline to the suspense of Glenn's eventual reappearance. By the time Mike sadly realizes that he must establish his own moral center, Troy has etched a memorable portrait of a family in crisis, a small town's reaction, and the classic human need for understanding and connection. Her main achievement, however, is to inhabit Mike so completely that his character flaws and emotional volatility are rendered with keen compassion. Moreover, each one of the supporting characters--from the conflicted Lee-Ann, who understands Mike all too well, to the poignantly openhearted Donetta, to Mike's bravely repressed mother, to the lonely detective who leads the search for Glenn, to a feral little woman who surfaces as Glenn's companion--is drawn with a tolerance for human frailty. Like the Black Hills that represent the comfort of home to Mike, the novel encircles the reader in a believable world. Author tour. (July)