SLOW DANCING ON DINOSAUR BONES

A debut southern gothic loaded with all the requisite ingredients: bootleggers, banjo-pickers, evil strip-miners, and a couple of durn good-lookin' gals. The action begins in the tiny town of Pick, Kentucky, when Gilman Lee, who runs a machine shop, plays a mean blues guitar, and enjoys a certain reputation for romancing women, receives a land lease offer from the Conroy Coal Company and turns it down flat. But his neighbors June Collet and her daughter Gemma agree to sign over their land to the miners. June hopes for some security from the money, but bitter, beautiful Gemma knows better: She signs the deal with the same sense of cynicism that has colored her days ever since she lost her own color, literally. For years, Gemma has suffered from vitiligo, and she's bleached paler than a ghost. Only recently has she begun to take an interest in the world again, thanks to the attention of Tom Jett, a newcomer from California. Tom lives in an old house on Gilman's land, near the mining operations. Things get confusing when Gilman decides to stash his old girlfriend Rosalee in the same house with Tom because she's being stalked by an extremely unsavory and sadistic character named Frank Denton. Gemma gets jealous. Gilman consoles her, and all sorts of entanglements ensue. Witt plays out the story of the two sets of star-crossed lovers with a gentle irony that seems just right. But other elements here—the hackneyed strip-mining subplot and the assortment of stereotyped southern eccentrics—threaten to turn the novel into a parody of itself. When a final explosive act neatly resolves issues about both the coal company and Frank Denton, it's all predictable, as is the last sad event. What's unexpected is that Witt manages to make this ending touching and effective anyway—a testimony to what she might do if she mined a little deeper next time. Some fine moments but an overdone genre—burned green tomatoes.