ALL SAINTS' DAY

Louisiana native Benoit crafts a vivid, poignant composite portrait of a disjointed Cajun family navigating a blue-collar existence over more than three decades. Young Ulysse Bueche, called Russell because it sounds more American, grows up in the town of Maringouin, La., with few prospects other than working in an oil refinery or sugar mill; his violent-tempered, half-Indian father, Adam, has smacked him so hard the boy must wear special blue-tinted glasses for the rest of his life. Russell's French ancestry fades as he works transient jobs on freighters; meanwhile, his wife, Doreen, a local girl who squandered real talent as a softball pitcher, suffers back home from a recurrence of breast cancer. In episodes ranging in time from 1961, when young Russell is taken to the racetrack by his father and witnesses the gruesome death of a horse that Adam has inexpertly drugged, through the childhood and young adulthood of Russell's sons, Whitaker and Clayton, into the 1990s, Benoit enters the psyche of each of the family members. Though the characters' actions sometimes seem reported rather than viscerally experienced, the point of view shifts seamlessly, allowing Benoit to entrust the reader with such family secrets as Clayton's accidental death-by-pushing of his year-old twin, Ferdinand. The moribund Cajun heritage and language trail through this first novel like a nostalgic tune. When Whitaker, who works as an oily hotel receptionist, and his conflicted bride, Violet, announce to Doreen in the hospital that they have decided not to leave the town, the disappointing announcement leaves Benoit's tribe as hopelessly mired as they arrived. Agent, Amy Williams, ICM. (Nov.)