Angels in Tesuque

In this earnest first novel, Glasco juggles the miraculous realm of angels and spirits and the quotidian world of racism and politics while charting one man's search for identity and meaning. Born in a pueblo north of Santa Fe to a Tesuque Indian father and a white mother, Ben Touchstone rises out of poverty and a broken home, endures the taunts of classmates who call him ``half-breed'' and strives to become New Mexico's first Native American U.S. Senator. But Ben's climb to success is marked by moral compromise, due partly to his naive misjudgment of evil men--a tendency predicted by his guardian angel, who appears before a young Ben in a Catholic church on Christmas Eve. Growing up, Ben must cope with a jealous, alcoholic younger brother who vows to destroy him and with an abusive, drunken father who abandons the family when Ben is 13. A gentle old man called Two Crows, and Fernando, a groundskeeper at school, watch over Ben and save his life; that they may actually be otherworldly spirits is strongly intimated in the denouement, when Ben's angel reappears. Ben becomes an oil company executive and declares his intention to run for the U.S. Senate. He is threatened by blackmail and nearly betrays the Tesuque Indians, but Glasco keeps his sensitive hero on the right track through costly lessons. Ben benefits a little too easily from the grace of divine interventions: whether or not they're grounded in Native tradition, they function in this novel as a recurrent deus ex machina. (Oct.)