Earl in the Yellow Shirt

Echoes of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying reverberate in this many-voiced tale about a poor Southern family's efforts to bury their mother decently. Daugharty (Pawpaw Patch) gets off to a scattered start but pulls her narrative together with the help of some startling language. The aptly named Scurvys are dirt poor, without pull or respectability, though they've lived in South Georgia's Swanoochee County as long as anyone can remember. As the novel opens in 1960, Louella Scurvy, mother of four grown children, has just died during the birth of a fifth child, a daughter. With no money and no hope of acquiring it, Lay Scurvy, the ""old man,"" leaves the business of the funeral to his three sons, whose only way to raise the necessary cash is to ""run shine"" for Buster, a sleazy small-town power broker and bootlegger. Loujean, their school-age sister, takes over the care of the baby. Daugharty tells her story in the voices of the five remaining Scurvys and of Loujean's suitor, Earl, who becomes a kind of hero when Louella at last gets a proper funeral. Early on, Daugharty struggles at the delicate business of establishing six different voices. She employs dialect unevenly and often force-feeds too much background information. But she hits her stride as she zeros in on Alamand, who's the slowest of the Scurvy boys but an artist; the broken and fearful Lay, who sinks low before he gains his integrity; and thoughtful, hardworking Loujean, whose keen eye, subtle irony, heart and extraordinary sweetness give this novel lift. Author tour; U.K., translation, first serial, dramatic rights: Don Congdon. (Apr.) FYI: HarperPerennial will publish a trade paperback edition of Pawpaw Patch to coincide with the publication of Earl in the Yellow Shirt.