A Place for Outlaws

Julia Yates Marrs, the heroine of Wier's impressive third novel, is molded by two very different upbringings: orphaned at birth and remanded to the care of her puritanical Missouri grandmother, later adopted by her spunky ex-flapper aunt from Texas, Julia never finds her center of gravity. Her marriage to Avery Marrs, a traveling salesman with a habit of reciting Greek myths, produces one child but leaves submissive Julia unfulfilled. Ten years after Avery's death, Julia, 62, transplants herself to Florida and has a torrid affair with Adam Smith, who turns out to be a drug-smuggling con man. Wier ( Departing as Air ) shows how Julia's thwarted identity ripples through to her son Cole, a divorced Alabama professor messed up on cocaine. In her ill-fated love affair, however, Julia seems merely pathetic, and her oft-recalled husband Avery remains a cipher. Yet this shimmering, powerful story, with its unflinching but sensitive sex scenes, evokes time's inexorable flow, the tug of unlived dreams. Transcending labels like "Southern fiction," Wier's engaging family saga is an exploration of the way people live and fitfully cope.