COAL MINER'S HOLIDAY

The rough-hearted, rarely savory inhabitants of the Great Appalachian Coal Basin traipse through the pages of this tight, poignant debut story collection. The grim voices here speak of faraway ambition and long-gone desire, such as the creepy killer of the first tale, "I Loved the Squire," who obsesses about the bloated anatomy of his latest drowned victim, or the strange man in "The Mystery of George Jones," who hitches himself to an older woman and gradually transforms himself into a look-alike of the famous country and western singer. In most of the tales, DeLancey enters directly into the minds of her characters, many of whom work in factories or mines (she herself spent many years working in the coal industry). In the title story, which takes its name from a euphemism for layoffs, a young woman with limited prospects, Kathy Borden, congratulates herself on the choices she has made to manage her life: an early marriage to an older miner, a job in a bank and the affair she has with a slick guy when her husband gets laid off. For most of the hand-to-mouth characters, there isn't much more to life than that. When DeLancey does try her hand at a more didactic, expository approach, she loses her acuity, as in the last story, "The Welsh Engineer (Pikeville)," in which the title character demonstrates an unseemly, self-delusional pride in his polished daughter. But in the strongest stories, there is an immense, riveting power in the author's oblique, repetitive sentences. National advertising; author tour in Kentucky, Ohio and New York. (May)