FICTION

LOST IN THE CITY by Edward P. Jones (Morrow: $19; 288 pp.) To the list of America’s fine short-story writers, add the name of Edward P. Jones. This first collection would merit praise whenever it appeared, but especially now, in the wake of the Los Angeles riots, when whites and blacks need more than ever to believe in each other’s humanity. These 14 stories of African-American life in Washington, D.C., affirm that humanity as only good literature can.

There’s no secret to it, or only the final, most elusive secret: Jones has near-perfect pitch for people. A motherless girl who raises pigeons, old women stirred by a lightning storm to remember the dark rural past, a boy whose demanding lady boss at a grocery store becomes his best friend, a man who finds a new lifestyle knocking on strangers’ doors in search of his runaway daughter, a woman whose father, imprisoned 25 years for killing her mother, wants to get back into her life--whoever they are, he reveals them to us from the inside out.

Technically, Jones has all the equipment he needs: a polished style, a good ear, a street-by-street knowledge of his city. He shows us a society of unsung people whose only connection with the emblematic Washington is the occasional job as a museum guard or government clerk. It’s a society rich in relationships, but every relationship is tenuous, threatened by violence, drugs, divorce, accidents--all the ways people can get lost in the city.

Jones’ skill rewards him--and us--with moments that transcend these stories’ sturdy realism. An Ivy League-educated lawyer is so shaken by her mother’s death that she climbs into a taxi and tells the driver to go anywhere, and everywhere they go she sees the humble landmarks of her childhood. A Navy veteran tells his bride: “We’re never gonna believe in anything but right now. Not very much of tomorrow. Maybe a little of the tomorrow mornin’ but no farther than that.” A much-married gospel singer drives through a snowstorm in hopes of finding a stranger she glimpsed tipping his hat, “a respectful gesture out of a country time . . . when a little girl would watch dark young men as tall as trees stand respectfully close to young women. . . . Where had all such men gone?”