Familiar Heat - Hardcover

In quick succession, Faye Rios, the focus of this wonderful first novel set in a small Florida town, becomes the victim of two calamities. First, she is taken hostage during a bank robbery and raped by one of her captors. When her husband, Vic, a taciturn Cuban charter-boat captain, abruptly leaves her, she is comforted by her old boyfriend, Cristo, now a major league ballplayer. Then, when she is riding with Cristo, they have an accident: Cristo is killed instantly and Faye is severely injured, losing her memory completely. The reader roots for the slowly recovering Faye, learning who she is and getting to know a host of marvelous characters: the formidable Se?ora Rios, Vic's mother and the widow of a Cuban revolutionary; Palma, Zeb, and their precocious son, Elven, a black family who take Faye under their wing; and Vic's brother, Tom Rios, who protects Faye while slowly falling in love with her. Hood, the author of two previous story collections?including How Far She Went (Univ. of Georgia, 1992), a winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction?has written a delightfully assured novel, with much to say about the inexplicable nature of love.?Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sensitively exploring how love, memory and fate may influence one another (but offering no easy equations), this intricate first novel by Hood (author of two story collections, And Venus Is Blue and How Far She Went) charts the fortunes of more than a dozen residents of a small town on the Florida coast. The central character, Faye Parry, is a newlywed whose marriage to "the Captain," an older man who operates a charter boat, is jeopardized when she is kidnapped and brutalized by thieves?an event her laconic, macho husband responds to by being flagrantly unfaithful. The plottings of the local priest and Faye's mother-in-law, as well as of the Captain's more sensitive brother, to reunite the couple comprise a good portion of the narrative; and so readers may find it unsettling that the Captain, though never quite redeemed from being an unsavory, selfish character, is imbued with the power and means to grant Faye's ultimate happiness. Still, Hood's talent as a storyteller is beyond doubt, as is the power of her unique, almost staccato, prose style, which beautifully renders the odd emotional rhythms of these characters' lives.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.