Book Review - Crossing the country in search of illumination

BRIDGE OF SAND. By Janet Burroway. Houghton Mifflin. 328 pages. $25.

Janet Burroway's first novel in 16 years, Bridge of Sand, attempts to blend one historic moment, Sept. 11, 2001, into the life of one woman, Dana Cleveland, who is lost to herself. Burroway's 14th book is a challenging read, filled with inexplicable and unlikely characters and events. However, this reader wants to give the book every opportunity to succeed, since Burroway's lucid textbook, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (written with novelist Elizabeth Stucky-French), has been influential to many writers.

The story begins when Dana Cleveland buries her husband, a senator, on the afternoon of the date that still lives in infamy, Sept. 11. The catastrophic events of that day minimize any attentions Dana might receive as a new widow. Though she had not loved her husband and had been planning to divorce him before his cancer diagnosis, she nursed him through his illness. Yet, she does not allow herself to feel any grief for him. Each time a trace of human compassion for his suffering might appear, Dana immediately tries to imagine the larger loss of those trapped forever in the tragedy of the nation. Though her imaginings are grim, they seem somehow misplaced and even meaningless when plunked in the middle of Dana's very personal experiences:

You are sitting at your desk absorbed by some glitch in a paragraph of policy initiatives. Glance up to see an airplane at an unfamiliar angle -- nose foremost -- but you don't have time to make sense of this before -- what? The noise registers? Or does not? Death comes as a thunder that does not quite reach your brain: the window glass, the paperweight from the third desk over, a crown of Bic pens imbedded in your torso?

Several such paragraphs from various points of view do not illuminate what's happening to Dana: They simply confuse.

The loss of her husband leaves Dana alone in the world, both parents dead, no siblings, no anyone. At first, she cannot focus on anything, but eventually, she refinishes an old kitchen hutch, and this mindless work seems to cause a shift within. Soon, she tells her best friend, Phoebe, that she is going to hit the road. We know nothing about Phoebe except that she is always available for a phone chat with Dana, dispensing good advice that Dana usually ignores.

Dana's urge to hit the road is in her genes -- her parents had hopped across the country quicker than a jackrabbit, never staying in one place long enough for Dana to make friends or finish a school year. The only place that sticks in Dana's memory is her grandmother's house in Georgia, so that's where she heads. She is sad to discover that a strip mall has taken over the site of her grandmother's house.

Perhaps it is this loss, coupled with her other recent losses, that causes Dana to call Cassius Huston, a boy who worked part-time at the same grocery as she. Whatever the impetus, Dana calls Cassius, and they quickly become lovers. Her need is great, and she falls completely in love with this man she barely knows. Their affair is more complicated because he is married, and he is black. And his wife is violent.

Burroway wants to throw everything possible into this novel; rather than the kitchen sink, she adds an exploding piano. Race, terrorism, grief, loss, class and sex are tossed together in the hope that a revealing story will be the result. Unfortunately, Burroway's depiction of Cassius and other characters is so vague that the story seems unbelievable and confusing.

Though Dana eventually makes her way to Florida and finds a community on an island there, events threaten to mar the love she feels for Cassius. Dana begins working at Solly's Corner, a small store. Solly unexpectedly bequeaths his store and 43 acres to Dana, a gift that plunges her into new danger when his nephew's wife tries to get the property by any means necessary.

Burroway is to be lauded for attempting to write a book that weaves important issues of the day into an absorbing story. Perhaps next time, the result will be more satisfying.

Anne Barnhill is a writer and book reviewer who lives in Garner.