Set in the West in the early 1900s, Emshwiller's latest novel is the story of Lotti, a young girl uncertain of her place in the world. Her mother has just married the hired man, Ledoyt (or "Old Him," as Lotti likes to say), and Lotti is terribly confused, as only an adolescent can be. Frustrated beyond endurance, she dresses as a boy and runs away, taking her younger brother, Fay, with her. A traumatic attack while on the trail brings certain benefits: Lotti begins to put the facts of her life together and comes to realize that she was the result of a rape. Lotti returns to her home and, bolstered by a new understanding of her mother and an uneasy truce with Ledoyt, finds comfort in her drawings and newfound identity. The narrative shifts between Lotti's first-person accounts and those of her family, a technique that, if sometimes distracting, does create an intimate acquaintance with each character and with family relationships. More important is Emshwiller's verbal portrait of Lotti (cleverly augmented by Lotti's journal drawings of horses and people?many engulfed in flames) and of adolescent resentment and angst.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Pregnant and appalled, Oriana runs away to the Far West to create a desert homestead free of men (she mistakenly believes). Six years later, in 1902, a peculiar, big-hearted drifter changes Oriana's mind, inadvertently wins her abiding love, and captivates her daughter, Lotti, into a persistent love-hate fascination. With his checkered history, individualistic habits, odd appearance, and penchant for wandering, Beal Ledoyt seems an unlikely grand love and family anchor-but Emshwiller knows well the marvelous inexplicability of love, jealousy, and heroism. Told in the third person from several different viewpoints and in the first person as Lotti's journal, with recipes, remedies, and drawings mixed in, Ledoyt is primarily Lotti's story. This confused, strong-willed child-woman eventually follows her mother's path, running away and dragging along with her young half-brother Fayette on a confused, ironic, tragic quest for family. From the author of Verging on the Pertinent (LJ 12/89); purchase for public library collections.
Janet Ingraham, Worthington P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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