BETWEEN DUTY AND DESIRE

By Pico Iyer

Minnesota in the winter of 1949 is a world where everyone knows his place, and that place is often church, where proprieties are observed and secrets have a charge. Richard and Sarah MacEwan are a sweet-natured, guilt-edged couple held together by custom, affection and a devotion as much to the settled lives they've created over 30 years as to each other. But when his younger brother dies, Richard finds among his unmarried sibling's papers an intimate letter from Sarah and is suddenly propelled beyond the limit of what he knows and what he wants to know. When, further, the couple's divorced daughter Anna falls into the arms of a married man, all four are cast into a moral darkness, where each is alone, "a child lost in a world of shadows."

As far from trends as the passage of seasons it records, In the Deep Midwinter (Picador USA; 278 pages; $23) homes in on these four fallen but forgivable souls as they try to find the right way to act in a world where women smoke but never swear, and pregnancy and infidelity can destroy. It's no coincidence that author Robert Clark sets his debut novel at precisely the moment when America's confidence in leading the world and its belief in its higher myths about itself began to crack.

The center of Clark's poise lies in his characters--canny women and conflicted men earnestly striving to balance duty and desire. When his people fail to live up to their highest standards, he sees it not as hypocrisy but frailty and responds not with judgment but understanding.

Occasionally, the prose can sound like homily. But Clark unfolds the story's moral dramas with rare assurance and grownup charity. As his people learn to lie--to protect others and not themselves--and as they come to see how "sometimes the better part of love is silence," he suggests that religion consists mostly of the faith we have in those around us. In the Deep Midwinter not only shows how love can lead to suffering, but also, more interestingly, points out how suffering can lead to love.

--By Pico Iyer