Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest ( Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State. Original and earnest, informed both by human limitation and human potential. At the same time, the author offers a nuanced portrait of an insular community’s capacity to absorb difference, and it’s a cold reader who will be unmoved by his depictions. And, most crucially, Black builds toward the point when Perfect discovers that she’s a boy, but seems confused about what to do with his character after this astonishing revelation.

He devotes a considerable number of pages to Emma Jean’s experience as the unloved, darker (and therefore ugly) daughter, but since no amount of back story can justify Emma-Jean’s actions, these passages become redundant. While another writer might have chosen to complement the sensationalism of his scenario with a tempered style, Black narrates his tale in the key of melodrama.

It’s hard to know quite what to make of this impassioned, imperfect novel. But when the truth comes out, Emma Jean is a pariah and her most-treasured child becomes a freak. For eight years, Emma Jean outfits her youngest child in pretty dresses, gives her all the indulgences she longed for in her own blighted girlhood and hides the truth from everyone-even herself. Naming the new baby “Perfect” and blackmailing the midwife to aid her in her desperate deception, Emma Jean announces the birth of a girl. When God doesn’t give her a daughter, she decides to make one herself. Emma Jean-disappointed with six boys-is determined to try one last time for a girl. Gus had hoped to be through having babies. It’s 1941, and Gustavus and Emma Jean Peace have just had their seventh child. The author returns to the Arkansas setting of They Tell Me of a Home (2005).

Perfect Peace by Daniel Black