Courting Disaster

How parents should deal with the death of a child is the question haunting a Southern family in this third novel by Edelson (Bad Housekeeping). Ten years after the sudden death of their five-year-old son Vince from Reye's Syndrome, Angie and Joe DiPietro, along with their two surviving children, are still struggling with the emotional fallout. Angie, a hotline worker who smuggles pot to terminal cancer cases, copes by taking serial lovers, while lawyer Joe anticipates his first affair. Rebellious teenager Tess resorts to theft and running away from home, accusing her parents, ""You hate me for not being dead,"" while young Nick, the son they had three years after Vince died, is mostly lost in the dysfunctional shuffle, a thorny reminder for Angie of her dead child. Thanksgiving draws near and tensions rise as they plan for an overcrowded dinner that includes Angie's and Joe's lovers. Vague traces remain of what the family was like before tragedy struck, and the reader may be puzzled by the painful logic in the DiPietros' emotional schisms and communicative gaps. Angie, for instance, is meant to be the heart of the novel, yet she squanders her capacity for love and nurturance on strangers, at substantial cost to her own family. The two adulterous DiPietros, who are white, take lovers who are both people of color, and Edelson deftly portrays the awkwardness, the inevitable careless gaffes and the self-consciousness of Joe and Angie's heightened racial anxieties. By the time the DiPietros get through their nightmare Thanksgiving, readers will be relieved to find them finally ready for closure and healing. In the end, the tale of this unhappy family falters in its attempt to transform emotional chaos into a gripping drama. (May)