To the Winds

This unremarkable account of the ruin of a stereotypical alcoholic family during the early 1950s in the hill country outside Nashville, Tenn., is a disappointing seventh effort from Jones (An Exile). Related in a flat country twang, the drab, pedestrian tale is wearisomely derivative of better coming-of-age novels set in the South. Narrator Chester Moss reflects back 20 years to the time when he became a ""worrier,"" at age 10. His father was sinking ever deeper into alcoholism and his mother was too downtrodden to resist the inexorable dissolution of the family. Looked down upon as trash, the eight Moss siblings have little chance to break out of their abject poverty, which is exacerbated by their father's grandiose dreams. Over a span of six years, Chester's desperate older sister is sexually exploited by the town's ne'er-do-wells, and three of his other relatives are murdered. The crowning blow, it seems, is the loss of the family farm. Appended to this maudlin story is an awkwardly contrived afterplot dealing poetic comeuppance to the town's crooked sheriff. (May)