IN THE FOREST OF THE NIGHT

A gaping trapdoor abruptly plunges Dr. and Mrs. Liberal America into a Central American inferno—only to have them emerge with indelible scars in Faust's first novel since The Burning Sky (1978). At curtain's rise, Martin Springer, a ``Sunday supplement saint'' who flew south to bring the blessings of medicine to the benighted, is being held by communist rebels, maybe (right-wing government functionaries, and the local CIA drone, direly hint) because he's witnessed a politically incorrect massacre, maybe for no special reason. Springer's wife Katherine, frantic to free him before his threatened execution, blusters her way through a thicket of brass hats and bureaucrats in order to offer a ransom for Martin—unaware that he's already been freed by mysterious maverick Colonel Felipe Fuerte, who tricks him out in a helicopter-pilot's uniform, abandons him on a promising riverbank, and tells him to make his own way back to the city. Too late: by the time Martin's struggled back to Kit's arms, she's already caught the eye of Internal Security chief Jorge Cabeza de Vaca, who—furiously humiliated that she's spurned his oh-so- romantic advances—has her arrested from Martin's side at a restaurant and placed in a brothel. Martin, who hasn't come this far for nothing, retaliates by kidnapping Vaca's comely daughter Selene and forcing Vaca into an exchange—which is no sooner successfully negotiated than Vaca, convinced Selene's spent the evening in the same activities as Kit, challenges him to a duel. A chilly epilogue shows Kit licking her grievous wounds back in Wisconsin, wondering if she'll ever be herself again. Though the plot constantly flirts with Perils-of-Pauline heroics, and the characters often sound like understudies for a roadshow ``Snows of Kilimanjaro,'' Faust's study of their violation taps deep into a powerful question: Is there life after melodrama?