Beyond Molasses Creek

Ally Green, now 60, a world-weary ex-flight attendant and privileged doctor’s daughter, returns to her South Carolina hometown to bury her father in this latest from Seitz (The Inheritance of Beauty). Ally left home decades earlier, on the run from her “forbidden” (by the standards of the 1960s American South) love for Vesey, her African-American childhood friend. She later had a daughter out of wedlock while traveling the world—a child who was stolen in a cafe in Nepal. The first-person narratives alternate between Ally and her stolen daughter, Sunila, who reports on her escape from her soul-crushing life as an outcast stone carver in a Kathmandu rock quarry. Unfortunately, the characters are pure stock: the archetypical returning native; the mincing and bowing stolen daughter who’s low caste because of her skin color, which makes her less worthy of respect than a dog on the street; and Vesey, whose shuffling mannerisms and speech patterns uncomfortably recall stereotypes long past. Seitz’s bizarre little tale has the feel of a morality play that one could mistake for satire—but it isn’t. Agent: Mark Gilroy Communications. (Feb.)