Stygo Stygo

Hendrie's lively debut chronicles the hopes and dreams of people living in Stygo, a small town in Bent County, Colo., surrounded by fields of sugar beets and tall corn. Most of its residents want to leave, and Tom Go comes closest when he wins a $500 lottery and his dream of moving to Alaska seems within reach. But his friends aren't fooled: ``They knew where he would be in five or ten years. Some of them might not have known about themselves--a person can hang around a town all his life and not know about himself--but they knew about Tom.'' So it is with the other characters scraping out a living in these independent but closely connected stories; they know about each other. Lizzie, with her stuffed pet named Jubilee (``Armadillo''), knows that love is a chimera often glimpsed but rarely captured. Becca Jopa (``Arroyo'') watches her brother Brice struggle to fulfill their father's expectations while he tries to tame a gray horse. Edie (``What Lasts'') witnesses the wordless but enduring love her parents share in the days of her mother's fading sanity. The daily lives of these common folk gleam with light refracted through the prism of understanding wielded by this uncommonly gifted writer. (Apr.)