Body of Knowledge

Captivating prose coupled with a rich, multigenerational Texas saga produces a resonant successor to Dawson's highly acclaimed first book, The Waking Spell . Narrator Victoria Grace Ransom (named for the British queen) owes her 500-pound weight to a case of hypothalmus-damaging measles at age four. Unexposed to radio, TV and newspapers, Victoria has scarcely emerged from the Ransom estate since her birth in 1947. To pass the time, she listens to her black servant, Viola Lewis, tell tales of Ransom family history. A 1908 business partnership and secret adulterous liaisons create a hate-filled bond between the Ransom clan and the Macafees. Victoria's great-aunt Sarah, pregnant with Grant Macafee's child, disappears, and Sarah's brother William sires a baby by Grant's wife, Sophie. ``Dead'' at birth, the baby falls under the ministrations of ``frail and stunted'' great-aunt Mavis, a ``gnomic changling'' and perhaps the most original in a sprawling cast of fascinating characters. As the nearby town of Bernice spreads ``like a gravy stain'' toward the Ransoms' looming white mansion, death and disfigurement ravage succeeding generations. Dawson brilliantly ties up the familial threads at the novel's end. Her labyrinthine plot--a ``potboiler'' in the grandest sense--is transformed by a dark vision and poetic language into a work of the highest literary caliber. Author tour. (Sept.)