THE SAINTS OF SWALLOW

Singer/actress Roche offers a first novel about a burnt-out indie-rock star who is more connected than anyone thought to her small-town Catholic roots.

Mary Saint became famous for her edgy lyrics and outré performances, but her group Sliced Ham broke up several years ago after her band mate/best friend/lover Garbagio took a fatal dive off a hotel balcony and she went into rehab. Now sober, she lives in San Francisco with Thaddeus, a black transvestite who runs the God’s Kindness Church. Back in Swallow, N.Y., Mary’s mother Jean also lives alone since she moved her senile husband Bub into a nursing home. Devoutly Catholic Jean remains guilty that she didn’t defend Mary against Bub’s cruel, abusive behavior as a father. When Mary dropped out of high school and left Swallow after a particularly ugly scene, Jean cut Bub off emotionally. She rejected his tentative gestures to apologize or reconcile, but she feels more affection for him now that he is senile. After Garbagio’s mother moves into Bub’s facility, Jean develops a friendship with Garbagio’s father. Meanwhile, a local high-school English teacher who is a big Sliced Ham fan—and who sleeps with his student in a (comic?) plot digression that goes nowhere—approaches Jean about organizing a concert featuring Mary. Jean, a mix of prickly common sense and naïve provincialism, is excited to show off her successful daughter but nervous how the community will respond to Mary’s unconventional, irreverent style. Jean is also concerned about the ramifications of a claim Mary made in a letter about seeing the Virgin Mary when she was seven. In fact, Mary tells Thaddeus, who has his own horrific secret, that she writes her music for “the other Mary.” With Thaddeus’s help, Mary holds her concert in Swallow and afterwards gives her mother a bottle of holy water from Lourdes.

Roche knows her way around the music business, but her story lacks focus or drama, and the Catholic uplift is discomfiting.