Dancing on Glass CL

As the narrator of this well-crafted novel observes, ``Just because you maybe can't see something clearly, well, that doesn't mean that it's not there.'' Although Chehak ( Harmony ) here refers to the worm farm that a young girl sees in a heap of garden dirt, the sentiment also underscores her dark tale of ill-fated love and the ineluctable weight of family history. Twenty-five years after his flight from Cedar Hills, Iowa, Bader Von Vechten returns in an attempt to come to terms with the past. His homecoming frames a flashback to the dramatic events that led to his departure. A tragic feud between his forebears and those of the community's esteemed Craig family seemed about to be healed with the wedding of Bader and the lovely Katherine Craig. But Bader could not overcome his obsession with a handsome adolescent boy, and the storybook marriage literally shatters in a harrowing scene that gives the book its title. Chehak's lyrical prose will tempt readers to linger over individual sentences, but the narrative is so compelling that most will hurry on. (May)