The woman lit by fireflies

Four affluent former '60s radicals are called upon to rescue an ex-cohort from a Mexican jail; a hard-drinking diver for an illegal scavenging firm dredges an Indian's body from Lake Superior; a woman hides in an Iowa cornfield after fleeing her bigoted husband. ``In each novella, the past rises up to challenge these deeply probed characters, forcing them to make moral choices,'' said PW. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

This collection of novellas depicts three very different locales and character types. Harrison is on familiar ground in Brown Dog, portraying the grimly comic adventures of a northern Michigan ne'er-do-well who discovers the body of an Indian chief beneath Lake Superior. In Sunset Limited, a group of former Sixties radicals struggle to make peace with their pasts as they come to the aid of a still-political friend. The title piece, a new direction for Harrison, involves a strong, complex female character who spends a night in an Iowa cornfield after leaving her husband at an interstate rest stop. Some harshly polemical passages mar Sunset Limited and a two-dimensional portrayal of the husband detracts from The Woman Lit by Fireflies. Nevertheless, much in these tales will satisfy and occasionally surprise Harrison's fans.-- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Three novellas from Harrison (Dalva, Sundog, Warlock, etc.) that are replete with his trademarks--a sure-handed sense of place and a sensibility that tends toward violence and macho chic. All three use extended flashbacks and emphasize the healing power of nature and the importance of loyalty. ""Sunset Limited"" focuses on Gwen, a 41-year-old woman with a radical past. When Zip, a cockamamie radical who still spouts rhetoric about ""running dogs,"" is arrested in Mexico, she contacts her old group (a ""pacifist Wild Bunch"" arrested at a draft board in 1968): Billy, a big-time California yuppie who hides his egalitarianism from his fascist father; Patricia, once in prison, now wealthy and ""too busy to be in love""; and Sam, a natural man (and thus the novella's wisdom figure). They all go to Mexico and try to get Zip (""The Last Radical"") free. After a good deal of legal maneuvering, everyone except Billy escapes with Zip; Billy gets killed protecting the rest in a bizarre, apocalyptic finish. ""Brown Dog,"" a lively throwaway, is the comic memoir of B.D., a carouser. Besides the usual drinking/screwing-around stories, B.D. finds a dead Indian chief, still well-preserved, on the bottom of Lake Superior and has an apotheosis of sorts when the dead chief ""speaks"" to him in the back of an ice truck. The chief, of course, tells B.D. to be more natural and earthy. In the title story, likewise, Clare--a bookish, frail woman given to migraines--discovers herself when she's forced to survive on her own in the outdoors. By story's end, she has decided to leave her husband, a thinly sketched anti-Semite addicted to his ""daily broker call."" The sense of landscape is powerful in all of these, but many of the minor characters are only slightly drawn. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.