Enclaves in Country

By Paul Gray

It is the summer of 1984, and Samantha Hughes, fresh out of high school in her small, western Kentucky hometown, begins facing some grownup problems. She lives with her uncle Emmett, a Viet Nam veteran who is displaying symptoms (bad skin, splitting headaches, gas pains) that Sam thinks may have been caused by exposure to the chemical defoliant Agent Orange during the war. Other worries include her boyfriend Lonnie, a local yokel who is obviously going nowhere, and her girlfriend Dawn, who discovers she is pregnant. Sam's crush on another Viet Nam vet, who reminds her a bit of Bruce Springsteen, seems stalled by his diffidence. Most of all, the young woman chafes at her inability to reach some understanding of her father, who died in the war shortly before she was born. Her mother, remarried and living in Lexington, can offer little help: "I've told you about all there is to tell, Sam. I was married to him for one month before he left, and I never saw him again."

In her first book since the highly acclaimed Shiloh and Other Stories (1982), Bobbie Ann Mason confirms her reputation as a chronicler of vanishing American enclaves. Even as Sam tries to escape it, her hometown is becoming just like every place else. There are fast-food outlets, chain stores, a shopping mall in nearby Paducah and 31 channels on cable TV. This electronic invasion is changing old Kentucky manners. When her grandfather utters a mild profanity in Sam's presence and is scolded by his wife, he replies, "Oh, she hears 'hell' on television."

The bleaching out of local color is the most vivid subject of In Country. Sam's quest to grasp the meaning of the Viet Nam War and her father's character seems, by comparison, a bit predictable and repetitious. "You've been reading too many of them Vietnam books," her boyfriend tells her, and nearly every other person she knows gives Sam similar admonitions. At one point, she tries to tell her father's photograph what has happened in the world since his death in 1966: "You missed Watergate. I was in the second | grade." That affecting exchange is vitiated slightly when Sam, some 130 pages later, again ponders the history her father did not live to witness. This novel may be read most pleasurably as a short story that almost overstays its welcome. Its broad design is less memorable than its passing details.