AIR BURIAL

Shields's debut is a tough, touching road story about three reluctant adventurers doomed to covet something or someone they can't have. Caroline is a 29-year-old event planner in New York. Attending her father's funeral in Chicago, she runs into her 58-year-old uncle, Virgil, a divorced playboy. The two have an unlikely and potentially scandalous romantic encounter. Virgil has pancreatic cancer, but has decided to let the disease run its course and keep it a secret from the family. Caroline has been emotionally numb since her father's death, and Virgil persuades her to abandon work for a while and travel with him to New Orleans, where Virgil's heroin-addict son, David, has recently disappeared. A Southern tycoon named Arch Demwalt helps the couple find David. In exchange, Caroline agrees to plan Arch's wedding in Dallas, Tex., and she, Virgil and David hit the road once again. Arch doesn't care how much it costs to rent gold flatware; he just wants Caroline to keep his young fiancée, Veronica, from riding her Arabian horse to the altar. In a harrowing scene, Veronica gets even by sharing a bag of heroin with David. The soulful yet unsentimental Shields writes about her drifters with wry sympathy, droll humor and a fine ear for dialogue. Road trips and the yearnings that inspire them are familiar subjects, but Shields handles her material with intelligence and grace, if not wild originality. (Feb.)