Frank Dawson was a former Confederate Navy serviceman who, after the war, played a major role in Charleston, S.C.'s Reconstruction politics as a newspaper editor. Calling him David Lawton, novelist Baldwin (The Hard to Catch Mercy
) fictionalizes the romantic tempest that brewed in Dawson's home beginning in the fall of 1888 and culminated in his March 1889 murder. The players include Lawton's deteriorating wife, Rebecca, who has never quite recovered from her brother's death in a duel, a miscarriage and the death of one of her children; Rebecca's sister, Abbe, who is as outgoing as Rebecca is retiring; the young Swiss governess, Hélène, who is getting attention from Lawton, and from Dr. David McCall, the also married next-door neighbor; and finally Mary, a prostitute who's got something on everyone in town. In a needless conceit, Baldwin creates a fictional author for the book and dates its composition to 1907; ineffective period prose makes the sex that's on everyone's minds somewhat comical, and the various flashbacks and shifts in voice overly complicated. Dawson's murder has everything to do with honor and the Old South, which Baldwin captures admirably, but structural inconsistencies and flaws make this novel (the first published by the press) a muddle. (Nov.)
