A STRING OF CHANCES

The prospective fictional pitfalls are many: 16-year-old Evie Hutchins, a backwoods-Maryland preacher's daughter, is spending the summer in the "godless household" of cousin Donna lean and her husband Tom—where, inevitably, her faith will waver and her own home, locked into ritual and good works, will lose something of its luster. But Naylor manages the crucial situation—the at-home birth and devastating "crib death" of Donna lean and Tom's baby—with sufficient emotional conviction (and infant-nurture detail) to carry Evie's self-searchings along. The book is still largely a composite, in which the various strands gradually and salubriously merge. Evie's loathed cousin Matt demonstrates that a skeptic can be a healthy influence and a moral bulwark. Her personable love-interest, Chris, turns out to be rather a lightweight. Her father's acceptance, even defense of Matt proves him not to be a narrow-minded zealot. Her sister Rose, who lost Tom to Donna lean, takes the first step toward reconciliation by attending baby Josh's funeral—and Donna Jean, crushed by Josh's death, takes the answering step of spending a restorative day at the Hutchins'. Erie, meanwhile, takes heart from the healing of breaches and the tolerance of doubts, and even begins to think seriously of Matt—whom we recognize early on as her counterpart in the search for selfhood. There's a lot of worthiness, in short, but the fluent, low-key storytelling, plus the vivid presence of baby Josh, will probably prevent readers from recognizing the underlying manipulation.