One Heart

Like her debut collection, Director of the World & Other Stories, which won the 1992 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, McCafferty's first novel focuses on the life-altering effects of love, loss and abandonment. Sisters Gladys and Ivy, both in their late 40s, live and work as cooks at a school and summer camp in upstate New York. Ivy is fat and cheerful; Gladys is fat and dour (but as Ivy says, ""I been fat since birth. Gladys only blew up after she had troubles""). Ever since they were children, Gladys's life has been stormier than Ivy's. Their father focused all his attention on Gladys, alternately praising and beating her. Gladys married James (""the two of them were so in love it made me nearly sick to be around,"" Ivy says), but the couple's three-year-old daughter drowned, Gladys's stepson was killed in Vietnam and the marriage failed. When the novel begins, Gladys has been living and working with Ivy for 10 years, but the sisters remain a mystery to each other. Ivy is determined to crack Gladys's hard exterior, and Gladys is suspicious of Ivy's even temper. Then Raelene, a lonely teenager from Philadelphia, wheedles her way into Gladys's affections and serves as a catalyst for Gladys's healing. While the two of them are away on a cross-country odyssey, James visits Ivy, and Ivy and her sister's ex-husband become lovers. Ivy, Gladys, James and Raelene take turns narrating chapters as their stories unfold, and McCafferty gives readers a split-screen view of the nature of personal transformation. Gradually, the overriding sense of despair that hangs over the novel is replaced by hope, as Gladys and Ivy accept change and welcome renewal. (Oct.)