Voices from Home

Much like the country music it praises, this first novel is affecting, hokey and truthful. Libby is a teenager caught in debris from a broken home. Quizzed by a court officer during a custody hearing, Libby observes ``a dropped ceiling, droning a cold dew of fluorescent light on their skins. Some of the acoustical panels crumbled at the edges like broken saltines.'' Meticulously faithful to the idiom of the blue-collar South, this writing is compelling, but Caudle's plotting is contrived. Trish, a kindly social worker who serves as deus ex machina; Tina, a stalwart renegade; and Willie, a convenient mother-substitute, act to produce a bittersweet ending that ties up too many loose ends. Yet Caudle delivers the story from its flaws with a fresh, accurate, unpretentious voice, and by the honesty and intelligence of the sentiment that motivates it. (Aug.)