A few dozen brief, hard-core sexual episodes--tenuously presented as a Michener-style saga of southern New Jersey, with a few family trees traced from 1677 to 2000 A.D. The beginners of the bloodlines here are liberated-female Martha Laud from London; dirty old colonist Josiah Ross; Indian woman Jin; and lustful pioneer Seneca Rane--all of whom are soon copulating like mad, with tragic results when Josiah shifts his lust from Jin to her daughter Kitty. In the 1700s this mixed-blooded clan will intermarry with some tavern-owners (who are into kinky bondage). Future generations will include a Revolutionary War hero, a Senator, the operators of a girls' school, a baseball player, sibling incest (both homosexual and lesbian), sadomasochism, gang-bangs, violent death (the Senator and his mad wife drown together), orgies, the discovery of the vibrator and other sex toys. Plus: references throughout to some monstrous beast (the ""Jersey Devil"") that haunts the region. If first-novelist Singleton had any of the brio or sexual sass of a Rita Mae Brown, perhaps there'd be some raunchy fun in the idea of a porno-Michenerization. Unfortunately, however, the writing here is flat and unfunny, with little period atmosphere and lots of anachronisms--making this a tedious sex-and-history mosaic, of prurient interest only.
Pub Date: June 14, 1982
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Poseidon/Pocket Books--dist. by Simon & Schuster