Glenallen

Heavy-handed foreshadowing and a slow pace mar this historical novel, which chronicles its heroine's involvement with an Irish estate and its owners, the Fitzallens. Peg Donlon first visits Glenallen as a schoolgirl in the early 1930s, when she meets the Fitzallen children: cruel Harriet, quiet Brian and handsome Peter. Later, Peg marries Brian; they return to the estate, and she begins to observe the family's twisted relationships, its jealous animosities and the festering resentment of its members, especially Harriet, whose obsession with the estate renders her capable of doing anything to preserve her stake in it. The land controls the people, and Peg watches as a series of tragedies befall her friends and family. She and Brian leave Glenallen and Brian enlists in WW II, but Glenallen exerts a mysterious pull on them both. Ryan ( Whispers in the Wind ) diminishes the story's narrative force by relying on a not-very-puzzling mystery and an annoyingly obtuse heroine who passively refuses to heed warning signs that she herself reveals to the reader. (Mar.)