In Search of Satisfaction

American Book Award-winner Cooper (for the short-story collection Homemade Love) sets her second novel (after Family) in Yoville, a small legal township outside New York City. There, this preachy intergenerational saga traces the intersecting lives of two families of wealthy white landowners, the Krupts and the Befoes, and the descendants of Josephus Josephus, a former slave who's the lover of the perpetually drunk Krupt matriarch, Victoria. The birth of a fair-skinned daughter, Yinyang, from this temporary union motivates Josephus to plan his escape to a better life by stashing away much of the Krupts' wealth while poisoning them. Cooper's highly moralistic tale centers around the families of Yinyang and her half-sister, Ruth (born of an African American mother), as they fumble through bursts of prosperity and poverty. In the author's explicitly Christian universe, fast money corrupts, so it's inevitable that tragedy will ensue once Ruth and her lover happen upon Josephus's hidden treasure. Meanwhile, in the desperate Befoe household, controlling an internationally powerful empire only obscures satisfaction as greed and ambition lead to incest, retardation and soullessness. Though Cooper's storytelling is at times effective, her pietistic tone and emphasis on Satan's complicity in acts of evil (which the characters consider ``satisfaction'') may alienate less religiously inclined readers. Author tour. (Oct.)