THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603280574
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY DIANE SCHARPER
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
RIDING SHOTGUN
RITA MAE BROWN
Bantam Books. 341 pp. $23.
Rita Mae Brown wrote Riding Shotgun during the ice storms of the winter of 1993. Confined to her home, Brown wrote to escape the weather.
``Travel was impossible for a week,'' she explains in an author's note. ``I couldn't cruise into town and pick up a new novel. So I wrote one.''
An absorbing time-travel tale, similar to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Riding Shotgun is a variation on the concept that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. The main characters are Cig Blackwood and her sister, Grace. Both become earlier 17th century selves, with Cig being known as Pryor and Grace being Margaret.
Although this is an escapist story, it does have a point. The point is forgiveness. Can one forgive one's sister for an unforgivable act? If so, how? The answer - which is also the novel's theme - is, ``Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn't breaking. It hurts because it's getting larger. The larger it gets the more love it holds.
Brown, a noted Charlottesville author of 12 novels, three books of poetry, two books of nonfiction and several screenplays, is an idealist. She also has a penchant for women's issues and first became known as a militant lesbian writer.
Her first novel, Rubyfruit Jungle, with its female Huck Finn protagonist, became a runaway best seller. Over time, Brown has became more of an artist and less of a crusader. Her novels, however, feature strong female characters.
Take those in Riding Shotgun. Cig (also Pryor) is an imposing woman of Junoesque proportions. She has the clean features, the strong body and the lustrous eyes that ``would mark her out as stunning in a European country.''
Her younger sister, Grace, is the beautiful one. She is also irresistible to men, and anything but full of grace. Margaret, great-great-aunt to Cig and Grace, and sister-in-law to Pryor, has grace enough to last several lifetimes.
The book begins as Cig, a 40-ish widow and mother of two teenagers, grieves for her husband, Blackie, on the first anniversary of his death. Then she learns that Blackie died while making love to Grace.
Grief changes to anger; and anger causes Cig to have a near-death experience. That experience takes Cig back 300 years to Virginia farm country, peopled by the Deyhles, the Chesterfields, the Merritts, the deVries - all of the people who created the nation and Cig herself.
Soon Cig becomes two people. Born in 1955 and named after Great Aunt Pryor, Cig is named Pryor Chesterfield Deyhle Blackwood in the present. In a past life, though, she is Pryor Deyhle, born in 1671.
Living in 1699 with her twin brother, Tom, and his wife, Margaret, Pryor is pursued by Lionel deVries who closely resembles Cig's deceased husband. Tom believes Pryor should marry Lionel, because he comes from a wealthy family. Margaret disagrees. Confused, Pryor asks herself questions based on her 20th century self and her disappointing marriage.
Can one improve one's past life, using one's knowledge of the future, which is really the present? What effect will this have on the person who lives in the past? In the present? Can one put the lessons of the present into the past? Can one change history? Can one change?
Answering these questions, Pryor takes a delightful though somewhat winding path through two stories that become one. That story is set in the bond between sister and sister. MEMO: Diane Scharper, a poet, teaches writing at Towson State University in
Maryland. ``Radiant,'' her second collection of poems, will be published
in April. ILLUSTRATION: Illustration by TOM HALLMAN/From the jacket for ``Riding
Shotgun
by CNB