Wishing Caswell Dead

This odd but effective novel from Stoltey (Dead Wrong) opens in the spring of 1834, when the bloody corpse of 19-year-old Caswell Proud is found propped against a tree near the pioneer settlement of Sangamon, Ill. The mystery isn’t so much whodunit as who wouldn’t have wished Caswell dead. The teen was well on his way to becoming the village sociopath, doing everything from torturing animals to forcing his 13-year-old sister, Jo Mae, into prostitution. Being struck by lightning just made him degenerate into an even more loathsome and dreadful menace. Stoltey zigzags back and forth in time and between observers to show how complex human relationships are. Town midwife Annie Grey, for example, is genuinely kind to Jo Mae, but she’s thoughtlessly domineering in her lesbian affair with the village’s meek schoolmarm. The characters, who also include Caswell and Jo Mae’s self-absorbed mother, a desperately devout preacher, and the wise elder who becomes Jo Mae’s protector, are unexpectedly complicated and wonderfully individual. Only some stiff writing mars this worthy historical. (Dec.)