Saving History

Stepfathers, con men, prisoners, mixed-race children, alcoholics, prostitutes, abusive husbands, madmen and enslaved women make their appearances in a work that begins with all the earmarks of a detective novel. But Howe's ( Holy Smoke ) writing here, as elsewhere, is rooted in the experimental, postmodernist tradition. Clues are presented in impressionistic, almost pointillist images; the closer one gets, the more the picture changes. The narrative--about a single, impoverished mother who becomes involved in the black market when her daughter needs a liver transplant--progresses at a short, clipped pace in which people are defined solely by their actions, but these staccato movements are often surrounded by pages of rumination. The result is a taut, lyrical tale that demands careful reading. Freed from the strict confines of realistic fiction, Howe digresses; what seem at first to be sidetracks are instead deliberately placed ellipses. People whom readers assume have met by chance turn out to have been deceptively thrust together. While such manipulations at times jeopardize the narrative's credibility, they also transform it into a tale of magic realism perfectly set in its Mexico/California landscape. (June)