More Than Allies: A Novel - Hardcover

The glue of female friendship--sticky in unexpected ways--is the focus of this fourth novel by Scofield (Walking Dunes, 1992, etc.), who has written with skill in the past about stark western settings and the even starker emotional lives of her youngish characters. Maggie first enters the Jarrett household in Lupine, Oregon, as a teenaged foster child. Within several years, she's married to the Jarretts' son, Mo, and the mother of a small son, Jay. Later, following the birth of daughter Stevie, Mo wants to move to Texas, where he can find better job opportunities, but Maggie is loath to leave home and the security of her foster mother, now mother-in- law, Polly. Mo goes; Maggie stays--and unhappiness reigns. Meanwhile, living nearby in Lupine is Dulce, a Mexican-American whose husband--also in Texas--has recently been released from prison. Dulce's world intersects with Maggie's only at certain points. Their sons know each other, and Dulce cleans house for the more hoity-toity women in Maggie's book group. Eventually, Maggie and Dulce find themselves linked in more supportive ways, and the two women help each other move forward--or at least move on toward Texas. Scofield sketches memorable characters here, and her clear prose is a pleasure. But on certain levels, her message breaks down. The upper-class book-group women are exquisitely limned in their awfulness, but the moral appears to be that Maggie and Dulce, by mere virtue of their humbler backgrounds, are superior souls. This belittles what we already know of their complicated, flawed- -and wonderfully human--souls. Some beautifully carved pieces that never quite fit together to complete the puzzle. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

As she previously demonstrated in Beyond Deserving and Walking Dunes , Scofield offers trenchant but understated studies of human relationships that touch the heart as well as the intellect. Here two mothers, Dulce Quirarte and Maggie Jarrett, and their respective offspring, leave their smugly trendy Oregon town and set off for Texas, where each woman hopes to reestablish fruitful contact with her estranged husband. Brought together initially by chance and by their sons' friendship, the two women would seem to have little in common; Maggie came into the Jarrett family as a teenaged foster child and later married the Jarrett son; Dulce is a cleaning lady whose husband is on parole from prison. As they travel together, the women muse upon the forces that have prodded each one into venturing toward the terrible risk of love. Dulce's dreams--as rich and stylized as the paintings of Frida Kahlo--are scattered throughout the narrative. Eschewing a chronological order, the novel's chapters weave together the past and present, following a powerful emotional logic. Scofield's fluent, assured prose only rarely calls attention to itself. Like its heroines, this novel may at first appear to be quiet and unassuming; readers will find, however, that Scofield writes with a rare and moving combination of love, strength and humor.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.