The Beet Queen:

...tions and fireworks, and Chief Justice landscape...

...In seek signs and portents to guide their in seeing in Jesus the bond between the Lapide's case, I would call it a glorious lives...

...Mary, most overtly, believes in church and the Jewish people, because he illustration of undying Jewish mes- forces that defy human intervention: she is correct historically in seeing him as a sianism, which cannot help but irritate, reads palms, spits on bricks to determine Jew in a Jewish context...

...thor of a number of important works of and Fifteenth) more than the original J. V. LONG is writing a critical study of Evehistory, is honest enough to acknowledge Constitution and its framers, "will prove lyn Waugh...

...Celestine raises around faithfulness to Torah and a life ing a positive Jewish theology of the her daughter alone, requesting that the based on that, and as a consequence, but Christian church which challenges the troublesome Karl stay away...

...More difficult is the task of dem- was nothing "in the object of the celebra- Press...

...movement the church had become...

...His forthand exhaustively researched...

...It was a delicate thing, close to little tolerance for other people...

...In those forty years, Mary his secret safely hidden...

...Perhaps with good rea- Schwartz (Vanguard...

...any wide concern since the great ratify- profits ahead of patriotism...

...No, in both cases it is a matter well be referring to any of the three Christian church, but it is painful to see a of speaking on behalf of a future greatly women...

...His latest ing debates of 1787-88...

...principles of the Bill of Rights...

...novel Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich al- them by flying off with a carnival stunt Karl, Celestine's friend Wallace Pfef, ready had gained acclaim as a poet...

...different from the past in which both in a visceral response to the world, they Lapide is surely correct theologically Jews and Christians are deeply mired...

...Constitution, including the fundamental that the well will never run dry...

...problem is that Kammen has written a and used the occasion to praise American ROBERT JONES works for a major publisher book on a subject that has failed to arouse industry and chide businessmen who put in New York City...

...It Mary, Sita, and their friend Celestine the community explains his refusal to moved so quickly that it seemed to James are the focus of this novel, and we marry by his undying love...

...No doubt there will be celebrarender for us the power of the physical arms were full of towels...

...More daringly, challenge, and stimulate anyone who dates of future events, and dreams ominhe has advanced beyond any Jewish au- cares at all about the Jewish-Christian ous dreams...

...fails as a restaurant owner because the rabbis, after the disastrous church as a vital piece of the history of (Chez Sita...

...Here is Mary, for example, The Beet Queen is filled with such Warren Burger will go out in a blaze of describing the North Dakota winter: passages, which convey a palpable real- glory...

...If the char24 October 1986: 565 acters cannot probe their own per- alone...

...But this is old hat historiog- son...

...he speak for the Jewish people in doing When Celestine says of Mary that she If these are misunderstandings, as I am this...

...timed to appear as America is about to In the 1887 Centennial held at REVIEWERS celebrate the Bicentennial of the Con- Philadelphia lavish preparations were MICHAEL HARRINGTON is co-chair of the stitution...

...PAUL M. VAN BUREN, dience" of "the Constitution in American ests of the people...

...Mary's "miraculous" fall Small gestures, large patterns on the ice at school, for another, a fall that produces a pattern the teaching nuns THE BEET QUEER The novel itself reveals a complicated proclaim as the face of Jesus), the women Louise Erdrich web of relationships from which no char- are unremittingly prosaic...

...It is a novel that throbs, at times, and sets off on his own...

...He is build- and slowly goes crazy...

...Yet despite Erdrich's strik- value or uphold...

...Small gestures of seductive even than the movement of the Karl, the other brother, runs from Mary individuality help them to survive, but do plot...

...He lives his life as an escort tine watched as it began to happen...

...Having a child Henry Holt, $16.95, 338 pp...

...Despite the often grotesque events in their lives (the Adare children's abandoment, for one...

...onstrating the "impact" and "influ- tion that especially awakened the inter- THE REVEREND DR...

...The three children, one an infant, and Russell Kashpaw, an Indian who collection of her poetry, Jacklight, was set off for their aunt's house in Argus, fought in the Korean War and now, a also published in that year...

...Adare), is named Beet Queen during a to the town's unattached women, with A web was forming, a complicated local festival...

...He tells us that LINDA SIMON is director of The Writing perhaps shows that the Puritans were E. L. Godkin, who predicted that a future Center at Harvard University...

...The Beet North Dakota...

...We which Americans have failed to under- are a nation which has struck ile, Michael Kammen stand the meaning and significance of the but we are also a nation that is sure Knopf, $29.95, 532 pp...

...Sita, married, divorced, there are luminous moments...

...Kammen can guished Americans, including eminent book is The Catholic Fact Book (Thomas show how all political parties and geog- literary figures, had turned down invita- More...

...thor with whom I am familiar, including relationship...

...house, that Celestine could not grows up to become a butcher, like her Within these bleak lives, however, bring herself to destroy...

...Yet Erdrich is a writer who from an observation by James Russell the banks of the river stank of has been justifiably lauded, and even Lowell: bleached carp...

...His own new book of tionists...

...She is taken to be his dead fiancee, and transparent, with long sheer legs...

...Wallace bevibrate, throwing out invisible follow their lives from 1932, when Mary comes a respected businessman, and his strings and catching them, weav- comes to Argus, to 1972, when Celes- own sexual encounter is, briefly, with ing its own tensile strand...

...Celes- tine's daughter, Dot (fathered by Karl Karl Adare...

...On the way, the baby is quadriplegic, who wastes away in a Queen is very much a poet's novel, and taken by a young man who wants to con- wheelchair, also seem characters to the texture of the prose finally is more sole his wife for the loss of their infant...

...For these women, "out of seem unalterable...

...President Cleveland attended coming book is The Next Left (Holt...

...Today And this confidence in our luck John Patrick Diggins school books may still refer to the Con- with the absorption in material stitution as "sacred and glorious," but interests, generated by unparalTHE PUBLICATION of Michael Kam- most students respond with a yawn...

...The men and and naming her, Mary remarks about women who people The Beet Queen are Celestine, "was the first thing Celestine bound by ties that they only partially un- ever did out of the ordinary," and apparLinda Simon derstand, and they live out patterns that ently the last...

...Was leled opportunity, has in some remen's new book seems perfectly it any different in the past...

...Bicentennial would value the Civil War JOHN PATRICK DIGGINS is the author of The Kammen, a Cornell professor and au- amendments (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Lost Soul of American Politics...

...raphical sections invoked the Constitu- tions, as did America's leading historian, ROBERT PHILLIPS edited Letters of Delmore tion either as strict or broad construc- George Bancroft...

...Would his Christian counterpart be "tries to get her imagination to mend the convinced they are, they are first of all speaking for the church in rising to his holes in her understanding," she could misunderstandings on the part of the challenge...

...They seem bound by fate, and so Book Critics Circle award for her orphaned when their mother abandons do their men...

...right about the corruptions of music...

...She themselves enacting...

...the establishment is called - war with Rome, assumed responsibility God's covenant and so a matter for Mary pronounces it to rhyme with Pez), for reconstructing the Jewish community Jewish prayer and concern...

...Eventually, a secondary matter, they were concerned church to come up with a positive Chris- she and Mary find themselves caring for to fend off the increasingly Gentile tian theology of the Jewish people...

...rector of the Center for Contemporary Theolculture," as the book's subtitle and in- Apparently Kammen believes that the ogy of the Shalom Hartman Institute, troduction imply...

...Not given to reflection, trusting Jew sharing them...

...Many distin- JOHN DEEDY was managing editor of Commonweal from 1967 to 1978...

...In the shelterbelts, I came across and our sympathies with them cannot go The title of Kammen's book comes more of the deer's frail hulks and far enough...

...The snow ity of the midwest at its most grim and brate that which society chooses not to came so high that rabbits gnawed forbidding...

...I admire the 90 IT ITSELF "indifference" and "ignorance...

...Wallace, for In one deceptively quiet scene, a mother is welcomed by her aunt and uncle, but example, when he discovers he is nursing her infant daughter notices a resented by her cousin Sita, who even as homosexual, prominently hangs a porspider in the baby's fine hair: a child has aristocratic pretensions and trait of a young woman in his house...

...An old man was with its weaknesses, The Beet Queen After our Constitution got fairly found, one who for years had lived stands as a product of enormous talent...

...24 October 1986: 567...

...In the end, the distinct narrative was it what the sixties generation used to have shown, was a time of death...

...Was "Hands Across the trunks and upper limbs, girdl- ing skill and imagination, her characters America" really about awakening Amering them completely so that even keep the novel from being totally satisfy- icans to their obligations to the poor...

...Does Sita, irascible as ever...

...aunt and uncle...

...Or spring, when new buds should ing...

...the ordinary" means "as an act of free BEFORE she won the 1984 National Mary Adare and her two brothers are will...

...into working order it really seemed as if we had invented a machine that would go of itself, and this Awakening the people begot faith in our luck which even the Civil War itself but momentarA MACHINE THAT WOULD that the Constitution has been met with ily disturbed...

...Let's face it, John forthcoming Bicentennial will succeed in Jerusalem, is the author of A Theology of the Lennon has had more impact on Ameri- awakening the people to a renewed re- Jewish-Christian Reality, Parts I and II (with Part III forthcoming from Harper and Row...

...As one observer complained, there poems is Personal Accounts (Ontario Review raphy...

...He splendid complacency of my counTHE CONSTITUTION quotes Supreme Court justices and cites trymen, and find something IN AMERICAN CULTURE questionnaires to indicate the extent to exhilarating and inspiring in it...

...whom life happens...

...The only framers...

...It is thoughtful, well written, made to honor the handiwork of the Democratic Socialists of America...

...arrives, telling her improbable tale...

...A pilot...

...voices of Mary, Sita, and Celestine blur, call a "happening...

...can culture than John Adams, which spect for the Constitution...

...acter can extricate herself...

...He was curled in a large drift to be wrong about the American memory sonalities and motivations, they eagerly beneath his clothesline and his in 1987...

...But public festivities usually celeMy fruit trees suffered...

...Only Mary not alter the patterns which they find with the intensity of its small vignettes...