Hey, Joe

A novel featuring a teenage protagonist that isn't about sexual abuse, drug addiction, youthful violence or adolescent angst? Unlikely as that may seem, first-novelist Neihart has done it, with charm if not photorealism. His protagonist, Joe Keith, who lives in New Orleans, is openly gay but entirely at ease with it, smokes pot but doesn't have a drug problem, misses his curfew by a few hours but deeply loves his mother. The primary plot line concerns a lawsuit charging sexual abuse, filed by a group of orphans against Rae Schipke, executive director of the charitable foundation that supports their orphanage. Joe is connected only loosely and coincidentally to this main story line, however, and the narrative gains energy and originality when it moves on to the boy's nocturnal wanderings. Over the course of the long night during which the entire novel takes place, Joe meets Welk, a resident (though not sexually abused) of the orphanage, falls in love and loses his virginity. Even more than Joe, Welk is a paragon, a walking dream lover who's more caricature than character-as is Schipke, who comes off as a one-note sociopath. Neihart writes super-hip prose. Though it catches the tone of modern adolescence, it's ultra-fashionableness eventually wears thin-but not so thin as to dilute this spirited novel, which captures the rhythms and pleasures of the Big Easy. (Apr.)