The Gypsy Man » (1ST)

ROBERT BAUSCH is the author of five novels and a collection of short stories. His novel A Hole in the Earth was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year as well as a Washington Post Book World Favorite Book of the Year. He lives in Stafford, Virginia, and teaches literature and creative writing at Northern Virginia Community College.

The motto of Crawford, Virginia, might well be Beware what you fear, because it may come true. Penny Bone is terrified of the town's local legend of a child-stealing phantom. Henry Gault, her six-year-old daughter's teacher, scoffs at the tale, trusting in reason and foresight to safeguard what is most precious to him.
Penny's husband, John, is in prison for an accidental murder that happened because he was trying to be too careful. And in prison he will, almost accidentally, become a hero, which makes him prey to what he fears most—hope.
An eerie succession of events will take these people into the bull's-eye of risk that everyday life presents. While the Gypsy Man may be just one of Crawford's myths, John and Penny Bone are as real as the rising sun, and their strength, separately and together, reminds us why life is worth living. The Gypsy Man, and its durable and enduring characters, illuminates how an elusive truth lives behind every legend.

Publishers Weekly

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 Earth. At 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. (Oct.) Forecast: Bausch's last book was on several Notable lists, and this could be carefully hand-sold to admirers of well-crafted literary thrillers with convincingly created regional settings. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.