Free

Expatriate American Hunt ( Joy ) has set her ambitious second novel in Germantown, Pa., where whites still loyal to the Confederate cause, nominally free blacks and formerly slave-owning Quakers live in uneasy interdependence 50 years after the Civil War. Starting off slowly and proceeding with some verbal infelicities, the narrative paints a graphic picture of past horrors and the continuing bleakness of sexual and financial persecution. The plot focuses on Tecnotchy, a young black man plagued by suppressed yet potent memories of his mother's rape and murder 12 years earlier. An inspired gardener and happy protector of wounded animals and people, he has suffered too brutally to respond to a white Englishman's respectful homosexual love, though it offers hope for the future. Unfortunately, Hunt blunts her story's impact by including too many variations on the theme of sexual cruelty and abuse; her characters, black and white, remain caricatures; and even the poignant ending seems a product of the author's rage rather than of narrative inevitability. (Jan.)