A Season of Swans

In this highly colored but fatally overstuffed conclusion to the bestsellers Wild Swan and Swan's Chance , all obstacles to love and happiness are hurdled by the family famed for breeding racehorses at Wild Swan, the renowned Maryland stable built on the ashes of the Civil War. After a slow moving flood of reminiscences in the early chapters, the story picks up as third- and fourth-generation Falconers and Culhanes enter the final decades of the 1800s. To protect her precious family from threats made by her greedy half-brother, Gincie Culhane shoots to kill. Her outlaw status necessitates flight to the sanctuary of Wild Swan. There, where social justice rules and men and women are equals, her daughter Lexy becomes a crusading journalist, wielding her pen on behalf of women's rights, labor unions, and the plight of Southern blacks, while her husband Hawk follows suit for the Indians. De Blassis tries to touch on every major trend and event of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a herculean task that overburdens both narrative and characters. (June)