The first person and often singular self-examination of David Adams, at 63, has again the sere southern landscape of Clara and is a softspoken treatment of forbidden racial relationships. After the young, broken marriage to Portia, David has lived alone in the large house left him by his mother, sipping his gin and speaking only occasionally to Dora, his faithful retainer. To spite Portia, he shelters Jolly, a young colored girl who is running away from her (and more particularly- her husband). His interest in Jolly grows with his successful attempt to groom her table manners and improve her speech and finally- give her an education she might never have had otherwise. The village speculates and sputters; Dora leaves; but a retired teacher takes up his defense and takes on Jolly's education, until he loses her to a school up north-while realizing the strength of the attachment she has inspired.... A slow, and quite deliberate transcript which does not ignore the narrow margins of an Alabama town, the attrition of mind and spirit, and the loneliness of an aging man and his tentative transgression of an ageless taboo. Limited.