The Wicked Generation

Johnson ( A House by the Shore ) has written an odd but compelling novel, a well-researched work of historical fiction that deals with the eviction of poor tenants by 19th-century Scottish lairds in order to sell or rent the land at a greater profit. For its first half, Johnson's tale is a fast-moving Scots Grapes of Wrath , with the inhabitants of Fladday wrenched off their meager farms and deposited on the rocky nearby island of Rona. The novel's movement between the wealth of the laird's estate and the plight of the dispossessed would be unbearably mechanical were it not for the charm with which Johnson limns Issie, the laird's kindly younger daughter, and the passionate anger with which she paints the suffering of the tenants. In its second half, though, the novel takes a strange turn, as Issie, now a spinster schoolteacher and nurse, arrives on Rona to tend to the needs of her father's former tenants and their stiff-necked minister. The book skitters toward melodrama at several points, but Johnson's delicate touch saves it; the result is an often moving portrait of a little-known aspect of Scottish history. (Jan.)