cover image HEADS YOU LOSE

HEADS YOU LOSE

Edward Lewis, . . Red Hen, $16.95 (320pp) ISBN 978-1-888996-47-0

An innocuous but ambitious young man maneuvers his way into a life of wealth and privilege in the mid–20th century in this engaging but overplotted first novel. George Ball's story begins when his well-off father commits suicide on Black Tuesday, forcing the young man to leave medical school and survive the Depression on his own. A rough life as a laborer eventually leads him to a work project at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, where he meets and impregnates a Sioux woman named Matoaka. Ball leaves the reservation after an access dispute increases the tension between the tribe and the government, and when he returns years later, Ball discovers that Matoaka died while giving birth to a son named Thomas. Ball leaves the reservation with five-year-old Thomas; Matoaka's mother, Mary; and her children, taking up with Mary until she is killed in an auto accident in Boston. He then moves on to wed a rich surgeon's daughter, Charlotte Barnes, before being drafted into WWII, but Charlotte's infidelity on a trip to Saudi Arabia after the war forces Ball to choose between his marriage and a lucrative gift he is owed by a Saudi sheik. The twists and turns of the story are compelling, but their impact is considerably lessened by the authors' relentless tendency to tell the full story of all major and minor characters while linking the various subplots to the important political and social events of each decade. The result is a busy whirlwind of a novel in which underdeveloped characters are overwhelmed by far too many story lines. (Dec.)