When Lois Lane Sings

"When Lois Lane Sings" tells the story of a coming of age that takes half a century. Callie Harp is looking for joy, so when her estranged brother Monday's turbulent life lands him in the Indiana state pen, Callie leaves her beloved Kentucky to take refuge in the Pacific Northwest. When she marries and has two children, she is determined they will love each other. Her one dependable source of strength is an ancient pictograph residing in stony silence on the banks of the Columbia River where Callie goes on a regular basis to talk to She Who Watches. When Monday goes into his house on Mother's Day, programs his answering machine with dark messages, holes up for six months, and gets himself declared mentally incompetent, Callie finally has to ask herself what this family of hers is all about. Then she has to go back-way back-following the thread of her mother's life through a labyrinth of four generations of stoic women and family secrets, her own included. Callie Harp would know Barbara Kingsolver's prodigal Kentucky summers, and she would probably envy Wendell Berry's fidelity to family; but Callie truly understands Tony Morrison's chilling first-line observation in "Tar Baby": 'He believed he was safe." Callie Harp is looking for joy, and, against all odds, she believes she can find it. Women everywhere know about that kind of hope.