Knee-Deep in Wonder.

by April Reynolds Metropolitan Books, September 2003 $24.00, ISBN 0-805-07346-9

April Reynolds's debut novel, Knee-Deep in Wonder, outlines a young woman's quest for the missing pieces that could help her demystify the puzzle of her family's history. Reynolds's treatment of this universal theme, the search for one's identity, is flesh and provocative. As she cuts through layers of truths and half-truths, the author reveals a cycle of pain and longing that spans three generations of women.

"In the fall of 1976," writes Reynolds, "Helene realized she was surrounded by the old, the dead, and the dying." Helene had returned to Arkansas to bury her Aunt Annie b, the woman who had raised her, but that trip would take her into a maze of memories and revelations that would both slake her thirst to know and raise even more questions.

While staying with her Uncle Ed (Annie b's husband) to make arrangements for the funeral, Helene, plagued by the want for "mother love deep and dark as a carpet," drives a tortuous route to visit her mother, Queen Ester, from whom she has decided once and for all to get answers. The one-day visit is the core of the story, as the pieces start falling into place based on Helene's memories, Queen Ester's confessions, and her own observations.

Reynolds's use of imagery (the metaphor of twisted/overgrown paths that make it difficult to find one's way, for example) and descriptive detail presented in original phrasing, such as, "Auntie b knew what was going on.... She smelled it ... soured jealousy and craziness cooking on a stove," are very effective. Reynolds is a gifted storyteller, whose obvious love for and skill with language make Knee-Deep in Wonder, winner of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Award for work-in-progress, a welcome freshman to the school of fine literature.