RIGHT FROM WRONG

A love story, set in Texas after the Second World War, by the author of The Passion of Dellie O’Barr (1996), etc. Never was there a love so true as Sunny DeLony’s for Gil Dailey (or as Gil’s for Sunny). But since they—re first cousins, their parents duly lecture them not only on the danger but also the sin of incest. Even so, as teenagers, Gil and Sunny steal away for thrills under the moonlight, though they do manage to avoid having sex. Gil tries mightily to interest himself in other girls, and Sunny in other boys, but the two are so closely intertwined that anyone else seems impossible. Gil goes off to war; Sunny marries a shiftless man who beats her and then leaves her. In fathomless sorrow, she submits to the shiftless guy’s brother, who inevitably gets her pregnant. Then, in desperation, she marries a pious older man and flees to a little railroad town on the barren Texas plain. Gil returns from the war a changed man, both from his physical wounds and from the carnage he’s seen. He becomes a traveling salesman in the burgeoning automobile-tire business; he keeps a girl in every town but marries a homebody who despises sex. When he learns of Sunny’s suicidal despair, he spirits her away and the two at last become a couple. But their abandoned spouses, with the law on their side, at length pursue them, and in the deep of night Gil and Sunny steal away to France. There, they find a tragic happiness . . . but it’s all too brief. Far more than the formula romance it first appears to be, this one is a wonderfully realized historical novel and a passionate love story. (Author tour)