What I Have to Tell You

Robertson's latest tale ( Family Life ) captivates at the start, strains credulity in the middle, flows to a predictable end. To spite her beautiful mother and gorgeous twin brother, Jessie Farquarson, a Virginia horse-set graduate student, marries Dwayne Hawkins, a dirt-poor country boy who moves his lips when reading comic books. Believing herself ugly and unlovable, Jessie thinks Dwayne wed her only to inherit her ancestral estate. When Dwayne's truck is found at the bottom of a creek with no body in evidence, Jessie needs to know if her husband is dead--which she thinks would be her fault--or has only disappeared. In search of Dwayne, she drifts as far as Seattle, where she consults Phoebe Jewkes, a psychic. Jessie soon moves in with Phoebe and her baby, Dion, and then learns the truth about Dwayne and herself. Robertson's facile prose, quirky heroine and convincing, homespun details maintain interest but imperfectly conceal the skimpiness of an ultimately unsatisfying story. (Sept.)