HEART OF THE BEAST

How to deliver a calf, how to harvest wheat and halt a field fire, even how to run a cattle drive—these and other useful pieces of information are conveyed in this debut novel in straightforward and absorbing detail. Less successful, however, is the first-time author's attempt to package the information as fiction. Twenty-eight-year-old Iris Steele is an Oregon farmer and rancher who recently inherited the Bar S ranch (her father's homestead near the Columbia River) and her mother's property in the Wallowa Mountains. Iris has also inherited a lawsuit, courtesy of the Nez Perce tribe. The Steeles called her mother's ranch "the upper place" and pastured cattle there in the summer; the Indians call it "Heart of the Beast" and believe it is where their people were created. As she tells of her legal battle, Iris also relates the stories of her family—her combative and frightening parents, Ike and Elise; her doomed brother, Jake; her aunt Hanna, a mentally ill sculptor; and the ancestors who settled in pioneer territory. Unfortunately, the first-person narration is often ungrammatical ("To the left, off the kitchen, lied the screen porch") and tone-deaf in a way that is both irritating and unintentionally funny: describing the first time she made love, Iris reports, "I never realized what an organ the skin was until then." Moreover, Iris is too self-righteous a character to be sympathetic, and the resolution of her legal conflict is unconvincing. She does, however, give a riveting description of how to castrate a calf. (Sept.)

Forecast:This novel lacks the appeal of Barbara Kingsolver and Mona Simpson (two names dropped in the jacket copy), but the abundance of Oregon and pioneer history could make it of regional interest.