Strip Cuts

A series of vignettes reminiscent of Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Drayer's debut novel is set in the small, dead-end town of Cherry Run, in southwestern Pennsylvania, a place that until recently was dependent on coal mining. The book chronicles ordinary and surprising events in the lives of the townspeople, centering on Seth Hardy. At the opening, Seth is a 13-year-old high school freshman, newly saddled with a horrible nickname and painfully attracted to his kind and pretty English teacher. Though his father, Earl Hardy, is supportive and loving, he doesn't know the extent to which his son is bullied, not even when Seth, now a little older, nearly kills a loutish, long-time tormentor. Earl has problems of his own, but he always finds a way to solve them: he loses his job at the mine, but starts a TV repair business. In a poignant, if not subtle, chapter, Earl informs Hercules, the town garbageman, that his television is shot. When Earl learns that Hercules's wife has breast cancer, he virtually gives the couple a bigger, better TV. Cherry Run's other characters include a married hotel cleaning woman who has an intense, dramatic affair with a co-worker, a man who's desperate to defuzz his hairy back and a schoolboy who spies on his sexy female neighbor, only to suffer her clever, humiliating vengeance. Seth eventually comes awkwardly but surely into his own, focused on his determination to become a writer. A University of Pittsburgh student initiates him sexually, and the book ends with the endearing hero vowing to get out of Cherry Run. All of Drayer's characters are down-to-earth, fully formed people whose dilemmas are presented with honesty and compassion. 6-city author tour. (Mar.)