Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 31, 1994 TAG: 9407240010
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY JOAN SCHROEDER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Set in Chapel Hill, NC, "Souls Raised from the Dead" opens with a poultry-truck wreck, to which Sgt. Frank Thompson is called. Chicken thieves stuff their sacks full of wandering birds as Frank assists the injured driver, directs traffic and fills out the accident report. His 11-year tenure with the North Carolina State Police, Frank muses, often has required him "to impose order on a chaos less criminal than ridiculous."
The novel also ends with an accident, this one much more serious, in which Frank is required to do a great deal more than direct traffic. What he endures in the intervening pages makes it possible for him to do it.
At the center of Doris Betts' eighth book is the death of Frank Thompson's daughter - you know that from almost the very start of the novel. Mary Grace Thompson is nearly 13; awkward, horse-crazy and full of hope, and watching her die of kidney failure is agonizing for the reader. It's to Doris Betts' credit as a writer that it isn't maudlin.
Frank's pretty ex-wife, Christine, ran away with the county tax collector three years earlier. Now a cosmetics salesperson, Christine is predictably vain, shallow and thoroughly tired of men. She's also terrified of pain and blood, making her, although not the most suitable kidney donor for Mary, the least likely to do so.
A host of minor characters people this novel, including two of Frank's girlfriends, all four grandparents and Lila Torrido, the Thompsons' doomed neighbor. Though the reader might wish for clearer resolutions to some of the characters' difficulties - both of Frank's girlfriends sort of disappear by book's end, for example - Betts does a credible job of creating distinct, engaging women.
What she does exceptionally well in this novel is to probe the mind of a dying girl, who never stops thinking about life as she knows it - her horse, her friend, her father, her mother, forbidden sodas, her body, school, the future. This is what you'll carry away from "Souls Raised from the Dead" - the realistic portrait of a life that doesn't know its own end, even when the reader does. It would easy to wish for more from the novel, but finally unfair. Doris Betts' art lies in quiet understatement and a reflection of dailiness. The surprise comes from her dead-on accuracy, not from linguistic or emotional pyrotechnics.
"Souls Raised from the Dead" is satisfying, finally, because it tells the truth.
- Joan Schroeder's novel, `Solitary Places,' will be published in September.
by CNB