Cured by Fire

In McLaurin's third novel (after Woodrow's Trumpet), a series of tragic accidents unites the destinies of two middle-aged men who have little in common other than their Southern origins and early work in the tobacco fields. Lewis Calhoon is a contractor and ex-college football star who accidentally shoots his wife dead, abandons his young daughter and then compounds the tragedy by becoming a freakish-looking burn victim when he leaves a bedside cigarette unattended during a drunken binge. Elbridge Snipes, meanwhile, is a racial outcast, half black and half Native American, who forfeits his entire family when his alcoholic wife immolates both herself and the couple's young daughters after a financial setback. Fleeing their separate tragedies, the two men meet while living on the streets in Seattle. There, despite his anti-religious cynicism, Calhoon chooses to help his devout companion battle a series of increasingly dangerous lung infections. McLaurin gets solid mileage from the religious contrasts between his two principals and generates a reasonable amount of dramatic tension. His switching of narrative voices between the third-person tale of Elbridge and the first-person account of Lewis is distracting, however, and the final discoveries and musings of both characters veer toward cliche. Ultimately, however, the author's talent for illuminating the interior lives of his characters tips the scales in favor of this rather grim tale. (Jan.)