Edge

A wealthy landowner with a firm grip on a town's politics, a tough-talking waitress with a heart of gold and a middle-aged drifter at a crossroads in his life are some of the familiar characters Osier ( Covenant at Coldwater ) attempts to develop in this lackluster novel. Former high school teacher Ben Hill is traveling aimlessly and brooding over his divorce when he has the misfortune to crash into a wandering cow, demolishing his Buick, then staggers, dazed and penniless, into a bleak Arkansas hamlet called Edge. The cow belonged to Luther Bonewright, a prominent rancher who holds considerable clout over Edge's police department. Marooned without transportation and treated with hostility by the town's mean-spirited citizens, Ben works as a house painter and begins paying his fines. He is befriended by Darrell Dicus, a disturbed, alcoholic Vietnam vet who is suspected by the wretchedly oppressive local police of killing and mutilating a number of Luther's cows. The community's mean- spiritedness wreaks a terrible revenge upon Darrell, but Ben is able to exorcise old ghosts and move on, strengthened and encouraged. Unfortunately, the novel, riddled with cliches and burdened with sketchy and half-hearted sequences, remains lethargic and weak. (May)