Drowned sorrows

A dirt-covered whiskey bottle rises from the novel's appropriately somber cover. The image suggests something has been dug up that should have stayed buried on the Lovelys' farm outside Lindstrom, Minn. Alcoholism and other demons rack the Lovelys so much that one waits for a glimmer of hope to ease their troubles. In the meantime, houses burn, cars and trucks crash, and children and livestock imperil their lives by wandering into corn "as pervasive as the air you breathed." Even good manners are in short supply here.

This said, readers able to endure the violence and gloom -- the taste of author Rachel Coyne's strong whiskey -- will sip a sometimes intoxicating drink. Coyne's vivid evocation of east-central Minnesota farm country with its "maze of roads and cornstalks" recalls other Midwestern writers mesmerized by the beauty and dangers, physical and psychological, of living on and working the land. Returned home after a nine-year absence, Kat Lovely, the narrator, feels imprisoned in "the only place you could be burned and born on the same hot breath of August." She tries to understand herself and her family, and to discover the circumstances of her cousin Tea's death.

A strong-willed mother awaits her, plus two sisters -- one a drunk, the other a religious fundamentalist -- two brothers, and a sullen niece, Jordan, with whom Kat bonds the way she once bonded with the older Tea. Memories of Tea and of Kat's alcoholic father live on in the house, the land, the neighboring towns and county where Mr. Lovely would escape in order to drink in peace. Though elsewhere an astute observer of family life, Coyne, alas, fails to describe convincingly the reason for Kat's adulation of the self-destructive Tea, an important matter. The qualities about Tea that enamor Kat seem far-fetched or are too-little explained. Kat recalls Tea's appearing one day at the house: "The earth in Tea opened up and she buried my body beside her heart." This, for example, pretty much sums up Kat's motivation. That Tea is a successful artist further strains credulity, as does the reason for Kat's sudden return.

Despite these shortcomings, despite characters who often "shriek" or "hiss" what they have to say or who are little more than types (the evil Lucy Tippleson, for one), Coyne can write amazing passages. In addition to her descriptions of the land and of family dynamics, her action sequences sparkle, as when Jordan calms a horse or when the book's plot strands are resolved.

Rachel Coyne's first novel for adults marks a sometimes engaging though disturbing debut from a writer who, one hopes, will eventually produce a book of more consistent beauty.

Anthony Bukoski's most recent short-story collections are "North of the Port" and "Twelve Below Zero: New and Expanded Edition." He lives and teaches in Superior, Wis.