SLOW WAY HOME

A Southern boy becomes a pawn in a dicey custody battle in Morris's uneven second novel, which begins when eight-year-old Brandon Willard's drug addict mother, Sophie, runs off to Canada with the latest man in her life and leaves Brandon with his grandparents in North Carolina. Things unravel with the boyfriend in a hurry, but Sophie's parents refuse to return Brandon, intending to provide him with a stable home. After a court battle, Sophie is awarded custody, but Brandon's grandparents take off with the boy and head for southern Florida, changing their last name to Davidson. Trouble follows the trio after they settle down in a remote fishing village. The African-American church they join is burned down by the Klan after their ill-advised attempt at integration, and Brandon is interviewed by a local TV news crew about the incident. The publicity results in the arrest of his grandparents, and Brandon is returned to Sophie, who has yet another erratic, dangerous boyfriend in tow. In a far-fetched plot twist, the boy is rescued from her clutches by a North Carolina state senator, who remembers Brandon from a school class visit and decides to take him in. Morris's storytelling is solid in the early going, and he makes a credible effort to capture a child's viewpoint, but many of the sets pieces are insistently maudlin. Questionable plot twists—would Brandon's grandparents really leave everything behind?—and treacly writing make this a lackluster follow-up to Morris's well-regarded debut, A Place Called Wiregrass. (Sept. 4)

Forecast:A 14-city Southern author tour should help push regional sales, but even those who made A Place Called Wiregrass a surprise hit (40,000 copies were sold in less than a year) may find Morris's second novel a disappointment.