"The Trespasser" starts out so simply, so deceptively. A New York photographer named Sebastian Bryant drives up a winding, potholed gravel road in the Appalachians, finds a young couple he wants to photograph and sets up his camera. The couple's landlord, who lives over yonder, trots up with his shotgun and orders Bryant off his land. Bryant tries to reason with the apparently senile fella, and --

Blam! The novel's first trespasser bites the dust.

Pretty soon you realize that "The Trespasser" isn't about Bryant at all, but about the survivors who brew up the ensuing drama. Heke, the shooter; Cass and Sylvie, the photographers' subjects; Mattie, the aging schoolteacher who loves Heke, and a passel of others are all trespassers, in one way or another. They trample on property, sensibilities, marriages, shoes. They're snoops, rascals, hopeless romantics, fools or madmen. And some of them are really, really likable.

More important, they're believable. Edra Ziesk, a New York novelist, creates characters who stroll right into our imagination. Her prose is lush and evocative; her persistent, colorful descriptions of just how hot it was and just how much folks sweated are astoundingly varied and entertaining. And she respectfully renders the tricky, beautiful talk of mountain people.

"The Trespasser" flags only once. Unfortunately, it's at the end, when things wrap up just a little too sweetly. However, by that time you're so fond of the eccentric characters that anything will make you happy.

Ziesk is a fine storyteller. Hope she has more in her.

PAMELA MILLER