GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE December 6, 1996

BOOKS

Tragedy brings a rich and full story of deep love

Bailey's Beads

by Terry Wolverton

Faber and Faber,$22.95 hardcover

Reviewed by Dawn Leach

"During a solar eclipse, just before that radiant orb is totally obscured, tiny specks of light glitter at its edge, forming the appearance of a string of beads around the dark disc of the moon. These lights are known as Bailey's beads..."

So begins the new novel by Los Angeles writer Terry Wolverton, author of the poetry collection Black Slip.

It is a story about connection, and love;

not just roses and breathless, heart-pounding I love you's, but the deep down stuff, not always easy, but steady and life-giving. It grapples with questions about identity, and whether it is possible to truly know a person. Bailey's Beads tells the story of a lesbian family going through their worst nightmare.

Bryn Redding has been in a terrible car accident, and hovers in a coma between life and death. As she lies motionless in her hospital bed, the people who love her struggle with their conflicting beliefs about what is best for her as they each find their own way to cope with their grief and fear. Each person that has been a part of Bryn's life has their own understanding of who she is, and each person has a different way of expressing their

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Bryn's shell-shocked lover, Djuna, and her mother Vera come together to deal with the crisis. They, along with Bryn's best friend, her 'first wife,' her acupuncturist, and students from her writing classes for people with AIDS, are all determined to be a part of the process of trying to bring Bryn back into the world of the living.

Bailey's Beads weaves together the stories of Bryn, Djuna, and Vera. Bryn's story is told in poetry full of physical images.

Vera and Djuna's stories tell how the two women cope with the tragedy, first in their own separate and conflicting ways, and each gradually coming to a place of understanding and compassion for the other's distress.

Long before the accident, Bryn had carefully drawn up papers to make sure that Djuna would be responsible for making decisions for her in the case of an emergency. She failed to prepare her mother for this fact, so it is Djuna who must face Vera to inform her that her daughter did not want her to handle her affairs.

Vera considers the catastrophe the last stage in a series of losses as her daughter has

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gradually become a stranger to her, first moving to California, then announcing that she was a lesbian. Vera doesn't dare hope that Bryn will recover.

Djuna struggles through making the difficult and necessary decisions involved in having a lover in a coma. She refuses to envision a future without the woman with whom she has shared the last four years.

We get a glimpse of the woman Bryn was before the accident through her short novel, a fragmented narrative about pain and separation and anguished childhood. Bryn's exlover had the lack of insight to give this book to Vera, who spent a week drowning out its awful truth with vodka.

As Bryn begins to recover, Djuna and Vera forge a sort of partnership, based on mutual respect and their growing friendship.

The story stirred something in me, and left me wanting more. The first time I read it, I picked it up and didn't set it down until it was done. When I finished it, I couldn't believe I had already read the whole thing. It was like a tantalizing taste of something rich and full, something I could fill myself with. My only question for Terry Wolverton is when her next book is coming out.

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