I LOVED YOU ALL

This time out, Sharp gets as preachy as her pro-life antagonist, in a compelling but decidedly one-sided exploration of the abortion issue.

The Daigles are a family of fiery Louisiana Catholics transplanted to the bleak prison town of Stein in upstate New York. In the summer of 1977, it becomes clear that widowed mother Marguerite is losing her battle against the bottle. The more Marguerite drinks, the more her older daughter, teenaged Mahalia, gravitates toward Isabel Flood, neighborhood busybody and humorless antiabortion zealot. Without especially liking Isabel or her ideas, Marguerite nevertheless lets her exert ever-greater influence over Mahalia's life. In fact, when Marguerite goes off with boyfriend David Slattery to dry out, she leaves both Mahalia and pesky eight-year-old Penny in Isabel's care. In one hilarious scene after another, Isabel drags the sisters along on her daily rounds to convert the town's weaker-willed denizens. Little Penny fights her every step of the way, singing dirty versions of "Barnacle Bill The Sailor" at the most inappropriate moments. When Marguerite finally returns home, sober and married, she must fight Isabel for Mahalia's affection. Assisting in this effort is her salty but big-hearted brother, F.X. Molineau. Matters come to a head when Isabel and her fellow right-to-lifers discover that the high school is teaching a poem on abortion called "The Mother." Not only do they picket the school and pass our gruesome pictures of aborted fetuses, they break into the library and pour pig's blood on the free-speech display.

Sharp knows how to create wonderfully quirky characters and set them against each other in bizarre situations. But this latest effort shares the central flaw of its predecessor (Crows Over a Wheatfield, 1996): she just can't resist pouring on the ideology.