Crow Heart

Set on the harsh plains of modern Wyoming, this bleak debut novel is an overwrought and overwritten tale of family despair and self-destruction. Crowheart is a cattle ranch owned by the Daniels family, a dysfunctional group held together by blood, lust, guilt and their property's legacy. Jedidiah Daniels, the arrogant and lascivious patriarch, announces his engagement to Rebecca, a beautiful Indian woman 40 years his junior, setting off a soap-operatic series of sordid and desperate familial complications. Of Jed's four pathetic sons, Isaac is the most disturbed. He is an alcoholic graduate student who makes an amulet out of a dead horse's eyeball, is obsessed with thoughts of murder/suicide and is tormented by his incestuous relationship with his mother. Early in the novel, Isaac sleeps with his brother Gabriel's fianc e, Cassandra, who's soon intimate with Jedidiah's wife, Rebecca. The tension, bickering and bitterness among the Daniels men and their unhinged women makes this an unconvincing and depressing tale. Everyone is painfully unhappy and unattractive (several drool in their sleep, and most are preoccupied with their bowel movements). Filled with sex, drugs and really bad music, this novel reads like a dingy episode of Dallas, without the glamour. (May)