cover image Solitary Places

Solitary Places

Joan V. Schroeder. Putnam Adult, $22.95 (287pp) ISBN 978-0-399-13987-1

Schroeder's first novel about a small Virginia town united against a landfill operation is a politically correct but slowly paced tale. Four characters narrate in turn. The spirit of Lucy McComb, a former schoolteacher, gives voice to the past, poignantly addressing the people and the beauty of the seasons in her insular Ambrose County community. While Lucy is at relative peace, her survivors are troubled. Lucy's nephew has sold his aunt's land to the garbage company; he's now a victim of Alzheimer's, and his wife, Sarah Rose, grieves both for him and for the pollution he unwittingly allowed to occur. The criticism of Reba Walker, the garbage dump's most outspoken opponent and Sarah Rose's rival since their school days some 50 years ago, intensifies her pain. If Schroeder had based her novel on this triad of women, it might have been more cohesive. But she also includes a representative of the town's future, a 12-year-old boy whose father makes a living at the landfill. For all her effort to limn these dissimilar points of view, the narration lacks resonance. And the dialogue is uniform: while lifetime residents of a town might share a basic accent, their vocabularies and tones would diverge more than they do here. Still, Schroeder effectively maps the issues, and this is a commendable first effort. (Oct.)