FOR THE LOVE OF PETE

Marino (The Day That Elvis Came to Town, 1991) sends a distinctive cast on an odyssey through the South of the late 70's. After 11-year-old Phoebe's grandmother is placed in a rest home, life unravels for the remaining household—Billy (Gram's driver), Bertie (the cook), and Bishopp (the butler), forced to abandon long-familiar patterns, take to the road in a Deusenberg ``old enough to be drawing a pension.'' Their goal is to turn Phoebe over to her father, absent since before her birth. As the four bounce along Georgia's back roads (Bertie refuses to travel highways unless ``the Lord agree[s] to drive''), Phoebe prays for the failure of their mission. Fearing further rejection from her father—as well as the loss of her beloved Billy, Bertie, and Bishopp—she longs to return to her home in Lubelle county, an event ``not in the cards.'' Still, during this sojourn—which includes encounters with racial intolerance and alcoholic distemper—Phoebe comes of age, expanding her insights into her multifaceted caretakers. Neither occasional implausible leaps in character logic (a restaurant owner's incredible generosity; a phantom pregnancy sequence) nor the abrupt ending can fray the homespun integrity of Marino's tale. (Fiction. 9-12)