A Place for Outlaws

Julia Yates Marrs, the heroine of Wier's impressive third novel, is molded by two very different upbringings: orphaned at birth and remanded to the care of her puritanical Missouri grandmother, later adopted by her spunky ex-flapper aunt from Texas, Julia never finds her center of gravity. Her marriage to Avery Marrs, a traveling salesman with a habit of reciting Greek myths, produces one child but leaves submissive Julia unfulfilled. Ten years after Avery's death, Julia, 62, transplants herself to Florida and has a torrid affair with Adam Smith, who turns out to be a drug-smuggling con man. Wier ( Departing as Air ) shows how Julia's thwarted identity ripples through to her son Cole, a divorced Alabama professor messed up on cocaine. In her ill-fated love affair, however, Julia seems merely pathetic, and her oft-recalled husband Avery remains a cipher. Yet this shimmering, powerful story, with its unflinching but sensitive sex scenes, evokes time's inexorable flow, the tug of unlived dreams. Transcending labels like ``Southern fiction,'' Wier's engaging family saga is an exploration of the way people live and fitfully cope. (Aug.)