Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 30, 1994                   TAG: 9404290034
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By BRIAN DeVIDO STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SMOKE

Bradley, who himself grew up in Opelousas, a small southern Louisiana town, is known for writing about his own experiences in his fiction. The same holds true here. After writing for the Washington Post's sports department for five years, Bradley sold his first novel, "Tupelo Nights," in 1987 and returned to Opelousas to live. As we meet Smoke's main character, Pace Burnette, he has just sold his first novel and is leaving his newspaper job in Washington, D.C., to move back to Smoke.

What happens from there is a charmingly offbeat story of not just one man, but a town, and its day-to-day struggle to survive. There are plenty of interesting characters: Jay Carnihan, Pace's best friend and owner of Hometown Family Goods, an old retail store whose business is being destroyed by a chain called Monster Mart; Pace's father, who was Smoke High's old football coach; and Rayford Holly, the multi-billionaire who owns Monster Mart.

Carnihan decides that he's going to kidnap Holly. There will be no ransom demand, however. He simply wants to hear two words from the old man's mouth: "I'm sorry." Sorry for the business he's taken from Carnihan's store, and for the sagging economy the old man has brought to the town of Smoke. But the old man will not apologize, and soon becomes friends with Carnihan and Burnette, cooking meals at Hometown's lunch counter, quoting liberally from Walt Whitman, and fast becoming the most popular person in Smoke, even though nobody but Carnihan and Burnette knows who he really is.

Bradley's strength lies in getting into his character's heads, and having them think and act like real people, not like your typical John Grisham character. An example is Burnette, who sees himself becoming a eccentric, albeit legendary writer. "The fellow I saw kept late hours, toiling away at an ancient manual typewriter, a hand-rolled cigarette smoldering at his lips. . . some mornings he walked the sunlit streets, shouting the number of words he'd written the night before. He was the most mysterious resident the town had ever known, and a legend had grown up around him."

It is this ability to write about the human side of people: their good, their bad, their heroism, and their vanity, that makes Bradley of a different mold. Just in his mid-30s, it appears Bradley, also a contributing writer to Esquire and Sports Illustrated, will be on the literary scene for quite a while, using his wit and special blend of southern humor to make readers laugh out loud. That is what he has done in Smoke, a book that will have you reminiscing about the people and places that occupy the small town in your heart.