Courting Pandemonium

Mac McIntire is born to his cussing Ma in the delivery room of a New Orleans hospital during a terrible hurricane while his Baptist preacher-father is leading the entire nursing staff in trembling prayers at the chapel. Sheila gives birth by herself and, discovering that her no-good husband is cheating on her, raises Mac by herself too, in the company of women, to become the kind of man who not only coaches a high school basketball team but also, yes, cooks and sews. Mac encourages student Barbara Jeanne Bordelon to play basketball on the boys' team, and legal fights break out, as well as demonstrations at almost every game by opposing feminists and fundamentalists. This good-natured, sloppily written novel by the author of The El Cholo Feeling Passes is so full of characters' mistaken perceptions about Mac that it is overwhelming, an irritation. The writing is folksy but flimsy, with potency neither as a polemic for women's rights nor as a portrait of straight-talking and -living Louisianans. (November)