In the latest from Gilchrist—who won the National Book Award for the 1984 story collection Victory over Japan
—the grand Raleigh, N.C., wedding between Winifred “Winnie” Hand Abadie and Charles Kane is canceled when Charles perishes in the World Trade Center attacks. Winnie becomes despondent, and well-intentioned cousin Louise Hand Healy, a producer of TV documentaries, goads her to move in with her in Washington, D.C. Another cousin, Olivia Hand, is deeply committed to her job as editor of a Tulsa, Okla., newspaper and is torn between two men she loves. Gilchrist shifts uneasily among the three women's perspectives, and between the first and third person. The political commitment underscoring the novel, particularly in Olivia's scathing antiwar editorials, is deeply felt, and a nice twist is introduced when, on September 12, Charles's twin cousins, Carl and Brian, join the Marines. Gilchrist never quite brings the three female leads into narrative harmony, but she makes the age's dangers palpable. (May)
