The Silver Desoto

With unassuming blandness, this first-time author begins a collection of anecdotes shaped by a child-narrator whose voice resonates more and more insistently as they proceed. Except for Granddaddy, an incorrigible drinker who conjures flowers and vegetables out of the otherwise implacable Oklahoma dust, Betty Jane grows up in a household of women. They keep secrets from herthe secrets of Auntie's death and Mother's divorce, of Nanna's thankless years as a hired girlas well as ordinary facts that all her peers seem to have accumulated. As the others die before Betty Jane is 14, it is Nanna, heavyhanded, uncommunicative but prescient in important ways, who guides her through maturity, forbids her to have dates but sees nothing wrong in her going for a ride with Bob Wyant in his silver DeSoto. So tongue-tied adolescent Betty Jane rides alongside Bob, speaking never a word but transforming the DeSoto into a silver bird flying through fields of stars along paths of moonbeams. Throughout the book, the power of her imagination transports her from the flat, gray dust bowl of real life to a land of marvels, where movie stars are close enough to touch and daughters are reunited with their fathers. And the wonder is, the reader is transported too. (October 31)