FICTION

FAMILY STORY by Alison Scott Skelton. (St. Martin’s: $23.95: 388 pp.) When Annie Levine encounters her brother, Eric, begging for change on a New York City subway, she knows something has to be done. At loose ends since the kidnaping and probable death of his daughter 10 years ago, Eric has avoided family and friends. Alison Scott Skelton’s first novel, “Family Story,” tells what happens when two families, the Levines and the Carlsons, are forced, as a result of Eric’s insistence on maintaining his transient lifestyle, to face themselves and each other for the first time.

On the surface, “Family Story” is an expansive, heartfelt book about love, pain and courage, but there is another element that permeates every word and limits this novel’s effectiveness. With the exception of one character, the Carlsons and Levines are not unusually rich. They are nice, educated, middle-class, East Coast liberals who want to do the right thing. Yet, there is a subtle, protected quality about all of them, a rock-solid assumption of their place in the world that allows for a certain kind of earnest self-absorption and indulgence. This is an aspect of almost every character, regardless of what worldly goods they do or do not have. All that might not detract from “Family Story” if it were being used to consciously say something, but that is not the case. It is a novel that exists, in spite of good intentions, on an ever-shrinking island.