Billy Sunday

Strikingly original, Jones's second novel (after Julia Paradise) works as both a murder mystery and a historical fiction. But the real purpose of the Australian author's elliptical tale is to explore the nature of dreams, destiny and spirituality against the backdrop of the American frontier. Billy Sunday, an orphaned, vagabond, half-breed teenager, wanders into a tiny Wisconsin town in 1892 and secures a job as an assistant to photographer Charles Van Schaick. After learning the trade, Billy is slowly drawn into Schaick's bizarre efforts to photograph spirits in the nearby woods with the help of an erratic, aristocratic medium. When several local women are murdered in the woods under mysterious circumstances, suspicion falls on Billy. The boy narrowly escapes death at the hands of a lynch mob, an experience that propels him to his destiny as an evangelist. The second protagonist is Frederick Jackson Turner, the historian who popularized the notion of the frontier as America's defining metaphor. Turner becomes involved in the affair during his annual summer sojourn in the Wisconsin woods, where he tries to come to grips with the aftermath of a tragic youthful affair with a voluptuous Native American girl whose presence continues to haunt his dreams. Jones's writing is lyrical as he deftly weaves together historical figures, extended dream sequences, meditations on the nature of spiritual forces and the ongoing drama of the murder investigation. A final revelation about the relationship between Turner and Sunday caps a memorable story that is both haunting and disturbing. Rights: ICM.(June)