The Warrior's Gift

It's 1960. A band of carnival folk heads from Colorado to Kansas in their Packard, pickup, and trailers. Half-literate Louis is 16; his red-headed mother, Joy, is an erotic dancer with the show. Other members of the troupe include Joy's sinister lover Lenny, and Dacia, a blind black seeress who reads disaster for the group in her African fortune-telling coins. Offstage until near the end is their friend Washington, a benign black magician and veteran, the warrior whose gift is freedom, for oneself and others. When Joy is shot, son Louis is jailed. At the heart of this disjointed and improvisational first novel is an American atrocitythe racist brutalizing of whites and blacks who hang out together. Realism melts into dreaming and drowning sensations, sometimes experienced in a mystical pool that reveals the past. Unhappily, despite its noble message and slight charm, this novelwinner of the Associated Writing Programs Novel Awardmoves at a sleepwalker's pace. (April)