THE DARLING OF BLACKROCK DESERT

Across three novellas and more than 40 years, families come together and fall apart.

In the title novella, set in 1964 Nevada, Julia—a young Black woman—stops for a hitchhiker and her life is irreversibly changed. The hitchhiker’s name is Howi, and he’s a Native American man who works at a gypsum mine. They become lovers, although Julia doesn’t envision a life with him until she gets pregnant and has to give up her big-city dreams. Their lives are further complicated when their baby, Nia, is born with a disability after Julia is given thalidomide during her pregnancy. Nia’s complicated existence brings her family and friends together, but they suffer, too—when Nia dies in an accident, her parents can’t bear the pain. In “City of Angels,” Lenny Henri, a lonely Vietnam veteran suffering from PTSD with “skin something less than American Standard,” befriends Simone Bouchard, a budding artist with “skin the color of bone.” The two meet at the Los Angeles Central Library, and their friendship is primarily tethered to the shared space; when the library burns down, they both fear they won’t meet again. In “The Saints of Death Valley,” hazel-eyed Sister Francine leaves her Carmelite convent in order to adopt a red-haired baby left on the doorstep. She raises the baby, named Grace, but cannot protect her from the pressures and cruelties of real life—sex, drugs, pregnancy, abortion. Lost and seeking her path, Grace stumbles upon a bohemian family in Death Valley who takes her in, though the family struggles to maintain its center. Newman’s prose is witty, at times lyrical and haunting, although it can border on the overly precious. The plots of her novellas are quite gripping, though it’s easy to predict the downfalls, and ultimate triumphs, of their characters. Newman attempts to cover too much ground in too little space—each piece could well be its own novel—giving some of her less central characters half-lives.

An ambitious although not fully realized collection.