FAMILY MATTER

By John Skow

An odd effect of double image, of not quite being in focus, mars Ursula Hegi's Salt Dancers (Simon & Schuster; 235 pages; $22), a forcefully written novel of child abuse and parental desertion. The author's strength is her unfailing immediacy of language, which illuminated her fine previous novel Stones from the River. Her scenes, as character grates on troubled character, are real and vivid; they command attention. But the book's structure might have been designed by a committee to illustrate how bitter, unresolved childhood memories can be coped with. (Hegi's dedication is "For my women's group"; is there a clue here?)

The questing, tormented main character is Julia, a successful architect, divorced and, at 41, pregnant for the first time, by a casual lover. Her marriage broke up some years before because she refused to have children, fearing that a streak of brutality might surface in her own nature. Her mother disappeared when she was nine, and after that her charming, beloved father beat her repeatedly, abuse that stopped just short of being openly sexual.

Now she journeys from Vermont to Washington State to confront her father and clear her mind before the birth of her child. What she finds is a feeble old man, clothed horribly in rags of strength and charm, too confused to admit the truth he has always denied. This is the best of the novel, as Julia realizes that there will be no healing resolution because, as usual, life's story lines are murky.

Alas, the plot committee takes over. An aunt and uncle reveal that Julia's long-gone mother is not dead but teaching school in Oregon. A reunion follows, not a word of which is believable, including the mother's rueful assertions that she deserted Julia's father for a lover, and later watched Julia's college graduation from a back row. This slack stuff is soap opera, and even a writer as gifted as Hegi can't dress it up as anything else.