Dominion

Baker's ambitious but slack novel follows three generations of African-American men who make their mark in colonial and Revolutionary South Carolina, while battling nature, the supernatural and their sexual and emotional needs. Jasper Merian, a 29-year-old freed slave from Virginia with grandiose ambitions, settles in the forest beyond the town of Berkeley, S.C., where he toils to tame the wilderness. With the help of his wife, Sanne, he builds a home he calls Stonehouses, a place he hopes will be a utopia and a legacy for Sanne; their son, Purchase; and Jasper's son, Magnus, an escaped slave borne by another wife. While Magnus makes a life at Stonehouses, Purchase, a blacksmith, wanders the colonies, struggles through a fraught love affair and produces a son, Caleum, who grows up to join a Revolutionary militia out of neighborly loyalty more than political conviction. Baker (Once Two Heroes ) brings authentic quotidian detail, evocation of the religious tensions of the era and a fervent sense of purpose to the novel. But his high-flown language is sometimes more inflated than eloquent, and the deliberately mystical, opaque storytelling leaches the novel's drama. (July)