Bailey's Beads

After a car accident, Bryn Redding, a writer, lies comatose in a Los Angeles hospital as her mother, Vera, and her lover, Djuna, struggle to clarify their complex attachments to her. Interspersed with poems by Bryn and cleaved in the middle by Splinters, Bryn's novel-within-the-novel--about her childhood abuse at the hands of her stepfather and a lesbian relationship in contemporary L.A.--the narrative alternates between Vera's and Djuna's perspectives. What gradually emerges from these three points of view is a nuanced picture of each woman's conflicting emotions. Vera, an overprotective Midwestern housemom, had never acknowledged the abuse of her daughter or Bryn's alcoholism, suicide attempts or lifestyle choices. Djuna, a native Angeleno and photographer, had staked her future on her relationship with Bryn. As Vera and Djuna struggle over Bryn's care and their hostility toward one another, they seek to come to terms with Bryn's enigmatic persona and the prospect that she may never recover. Betraying a poet's proclivity for metaphor (Wolverton's collection, Black Slip, was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award), the prose in this first novel can be overblown (Djuna spills into her car ""like honey swirled from a spoon""). But as Bryn shows signs of awakening, the narrative gathers momentum, building to a conclusion as oddly comforting as a good cry or a rainy day. (Sept.)