JULIP by Jim Harrison (Washington Square:...

JULIP by Jim Harrison (Washington Square: $12; 275 pp.). The narrators of these three novellas by the author of “Legends of the Fall” seek isolation to heal the wounds inflicted by society, lovers and family members. Julip, a nutty but self-possessed young woman for whom “a true home has been, and will always be, an attractive fiction,” calmly seeks to free her deranged brother, who has been imprisoned for shooting her three older lovers. In “The Beige Dolorosa,” a stuffy English professor, falsely accused of sexual harassment, gradually blossoms in a remote Southwestern ranch. The most entertaining story of the trio, “The Seven-Ounce Man,” continues the misadventures of Harrison’s Native American ne’er-do-well, Brown Dog. B.D.’s pursuit of sex and alcohol make a mess of his life and annoy the people around him, but his undeniable charm somehow wins the reader’s affection.