The Storm

Clergyman and novelist Buechner (On the Road with the Archangel) switches from the Bible to the Bard for a tale of two brothers' reconciliation inspired by The Tempest. Cast in the role of Prospero is Kenzie Maxwell, a dapper and somewhat pretentious septuagenarian novelist who has settled with his rich third wife on an island off the Southern Florida coast. For 20 years, he has been estranged from his law professor brother, Dalton, and distanced from his daughter, Bree, the product of a melancholy affair with a 17-year-old inner-city graffiti artist who tagged her work ""Kia."" The upright Dalton blamed Kenzie for the scandal that shook the shelter for homeless youths where Kia and Kenzie met and on whose board Dalton sat. Kenzie, however, has been unable to forgive his brother for his callousness over Kia's death during childbirth. Other semi-Shakespearean characters include Nandy Maxwell, Dalton's ne'er-do-well stepson (Ferdinand); Averill, the ethereal Buddhist wind-surfing son of Kenzie's new wife (Ariel); and Clavert Sykes, Kenzie's drunken handyman, who claims to be the illegitimate heir to most of the island's real estate (Caliban). Buechner sets the stage for reconciliation as this far-flung family is drawn by various means to Plantation Island, and, inverting his source, makes a tempest the climax of their conflicting natures. If Buechner's version of the classic tale lacks the comic relief of the original, he is a fluent storyteller with a fine eye for character and a rich prose style that easily handles poetic tropes. (Nov.)