ESTHER'S PILLOW

Former White House press secretary Fitzwater tries his hand at writing with this thinly fictionalized account of a personal family mystery. His granduncle, a preacher's son, suddenly vanished from the family tree late in 1911, and Fitzwater traces the sequence of events that led to his banishment from the clan. In the early years of the century, Jay Langston is a cocksure young man living in the farm community of Nickerly, Kans. Little goes on in the sleepy community, so when young Margaret Chambers comes home from college to teach at the town school, Jay is not the only one to notice her vivacious—some say wanton—ways. A victim of malicious gossip intimating improprieties with a student, Margaret is lured into the countryside, where she is accosted by a crowd of cowardly men with feed sacks over their heads. After ripping off her clothes and daubing her with tar and feathers, they send her home with a warning to get out of town. Incensed by the outrageous violation of her rights, she brings charges against them and attracts the attention of a reporter on the Kansas City Star; the perpetrators, including the Bible thumper's sadistic son, are sentenced to varying terms in jail. In a rather lame denouement, after a sordid attempt to destroy the prosecutor's congressional bid with a trumped-up charge of rape, the parson banishes his son, who is never heard from again. Drawing on national news accounts, historical society annals and official court records of the trial, Fitzwater has access to fascinating material, but he never manages to invest it with fresh life, crafting a tale that reads more like dry journalism than a novel. (July)