Candles on Bay Street

Again writing under the McKinnon pseudonym (Dancing at the Harvest Moon), veteran novelist Cathie Pelletier (The Funeral Makers) tugs at the heartstrings in a formulaic weeper with a feel-good message. ""She was the childhood sweetheart I wanted to marry,"" says nice-guy Sam Thibodeau, a veterinarian in Fort Kent, Maine, of his childhood friend, Dee Dee Michaud. But back in 1982, Dee Dee drove off with local bad boy Bobby Langford in his gold Corvette, leaving Sam still carrying the torch. After an absence of 15 years, Dee Dee returns with her son, nine-year-old Trooper, and she sets up a store called Bay Street Candles in her home. Much to Sam's chagrin, his wife, Lydia, and Dee Dee become best friends and soul sisters, with nary a touch of jealousy over Sam. All too soon McKinnon's heavy-handed foreshadowing makes it clear that Dee Dee has chosen to return to Fort Kent for the saddest of reasons. Overused candle metaphors and Dee Dee's saccharine belief that every time you light a candle an angel is born illuminate the strikingly pale heroine's plight a bit too clearly. McKinnon skirts lugubrious overkill with some humorous touches, however, and the ending is quietly touching without being overly mawkish. Her strength here is the well-developed notion that while small town life, with its judgments and scandals, is often a place one escapes from, one can come home again for emotional and spiritual sustenance. (Apr.)