The Gypsy Man

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY SEPT 2, 2002

A small Virginia mountain community in the late 1950s is the setting for this vivid and heartrending tale of dreadful accidents, fear, guilt, heroism and redemption by the author of A Hole in the EarthAt its center is a couple, John and Penny Bone, with a cherished small daughter, Tory. John goes to jail for 20 years for the accidental killing of a young black girl. Meanwhile, another black child, Terry Landon, has disappeared, and an old legend about a gypsy man who steals small children the deranged scion of a family once prominent on the mountain returns to haunt the minds of the locals. In jail, John does something heroic to save one of the warders, and hope begins to flicker that he may get an early release. At the same time, a fellow inmate, P.J. "Peach" Middleton, a psychopathic killer, escapes and latches on to Penny's man-hungry Aunt Clare. This sets the stage for a denouement of hair-raising tension in which Penny has to fight for Tory's life, and the mystery of little Terry Landon's disappearance turns out to involve two surprising culprits. Bausch keeps his complex but utterly absorbing tale moving with a cleverly interwoven series of narrative voices, including that of the hideous Peach himself one of the most chilling villains in recent fiction and it is not until the closing chapters that the whole structure becomes a little too neatly contrived, with clues planted earlier brought out like triumphant trump cards. This does not diminish the impact of a thrilling read, however, in which the poetry of character is more important than the rather plot-heavy action.