Too Blue to Fly

Set in the American South just after WWII, this Alabama author's fifth novel (Sounds of Silence and Summer Lightning) starts off with an emotionally affecting situation and a strong sense of place. Unfortunately, the texture and vitality are quickly lost as the author freights the narrative with stock characters and sentimental, predictable plot turns. When his mother dies of cancer, 11-year-old Wally McManus is ripped from his comfortable Atlanta life and sent to live with his father, Anthony, whom he's never met, in a swamp shack on Lake Okeechobee in Belle Glade, Florida. Instead of Anthony, a booze-guzzling writer, a black boy close to his own age comes to meet Wally at the bus stop. ""I'm your brother, Jeremiah,"" he announces. Wally's first glimpse of his father is in an illegal bar in ""colored town,"" where he is being dragged out the door and dumped into the rumble seat of a beige 1939 Ford coupe. Jeremiah jumps into the driver's seat and briefly takes over the story with his charm. Too soon, however, Jeremiah is robbed of his originality and Wally loses his chance to express real emotions. After enduring years of progressively less convincing encounters with stereotypically nasty white trash, Jeremiah grows up. In a move calculated to tug readers' heartstrings rather than deepen the character or the story, he moves to Paris and falls in love. Ultimately, Richards contrives a happy reunion between Jeremiah and Wally in Washington, D.C., a scene so transparently manipulative it makes the whole tale feel like a trick. (June)