The Flip Side of Sin

""But there is a flip side of sin,"" says a character toward the end of McMillan's ambitious, complicated fourth novel. ""The only thing that can make wrong right is God's grace.... "" Forgiveness is the central theme that connects a group of people in Detroit's black community. Spanning several years and juggling half a dozen different plot lines, the novel loosely centers around Isaac Coleman, an aspiring journalist and jazz musician just finishing a 12-year prison sentence for killing a young white girl while driving drunk after a fight with his wife, Kennedy. Once he's released, Isaac hopes to get back together with Kennedy and become a real father to his now 15-year-old son, Peyton, but things have changed on the outside: Kennedy has become a police officer, and Peyton has joined a gang. At first, Isaac is supported emotionally and financially by his sister Rosemary, the pastor at a thriving neighborhood church. Through Rosemary--who provides the moral core of the story even though she has committed an unforgivable act herself--the novel addresses several political themes, like prison reform and women in the workplace. The narrative is compromised by too many angles, points of view and late-appearing or neglected plot lines (a conspiracy involving police corruption at all levels and the murder of a major character are never fully developed), and by McMillan's failure to alert the reader to temporal changes. While some characters are flimsily introduced, McMillan (Blue Collar Blues) does succeed in laying bare the dynamics among the main protagonists. As they struggle to find forgiveness for the people they've hurt or have been hurt by, the author blends family secrets, redemption, sex and sensitive racial and gender issues into a bold and dramatic, if disorganized, tale. Agent, Dawn Marie Daniels. (July)