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'Half A Heart' by Rosellen Brown

'Half a Heart' creates a complete portrait of two women in turmoil

Sunday, May 07, 2000

By Rebecca Sodergren, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

	Half A Heart By Rosellen Brown Farrar, Straus & Giroux $24.00

Rosellen Brown doesn’t shy away from the tough topics in her new novel, “Half a Heart.” Interracial relationships, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, racial and religious prejudices, class differences -- they’re all here.

But this novel rises far above being an “issues novel” with a haphazard plot and half-developed characters, as some other socially conscious novels turn out to be. Particularly in the realm of characterization, Brown again proves herself a master of her craft.

A wealthy Jewish housewife, Miriam Vener, feels trapped in her posh Houston suburb with all her rich, white, socially conservative friends. Although she’s married and has three children with her husband, she can’t forget the child she had with a black man in the 1960s, while she was teaching history and involved in the civil rights movement at a black college in Mississippi.

While attending a friend’s son’s high school graduation, Miriam begins to break out of the cocoon of indifference she has built around herself in order to squelch the pain of giving up her first child.

Realizing that her daughter also would be graduating from high school, Miriam decides she must find her firstborn, who since infancy has lived with her father.

She contacts her daughter, Veronica, by letter, and receives an enthusiastic response. Ronnee, as she is now called, has also been trying to find her mother recently. It seems she’s curious about her “other side” -- at least that’s what she says in the letter. What she doesn’t say is that what she really wants is not her mother’s love but her money. She’s headed to Stanford University but can’t afford it, and her mother seems a convenient solution.

They make plans to vacation for the summer at Miriam’s summer home in New England. There, the story of Miriam’s trysts with Eljay, Ronnee’s father, comes out. Miriam describes for Ronnee the bubbling anger of the civil rights movement, her own bubbling passion for Eljay and the necessary secrecy of their affair on the racially divided campus. She also describes how Eljay, using his own brand of forcefulness and cunning, had managed to steal Veronica away, intending that she not see her mother again.

Brown’s genius lies in her ability to create complex characters. Many writers probably would have succumbed to the temptation to make Miriam drippingly sympathetic -- the victim of a man who stole her child. Instead, although she can be pitiable to a degree, Miriam also spends a lot of time being a self-centered whiner who won’t get on with her life.

And speaking of self-centeredness, Ronnee seems to take after her mother at least in this respect. Yet she, too, is complex. Early on, we learn of her intention to develop only enough of a relationship with her mother to grab her money and run. But she turns out to be a conflicted girl who finds herself both furious at her mother for leaving and also sympathizing with her mother more than she had expected.

The plot escalates when Miriam’s elderly mother becomes ill and Miriam must return -- with Ronnee -- to Houston. There, Ronnee meets the Veners’ surprised friends.

Ronnee and a boy get into trouble, creating tension in the community and reviving Miriam’s old passion for civil rights causes. It turns out that both Miriam and Ronnee have some learning to do.

One caution: Readers who don’t like Rosellen Brown chiefly complain that her books drag. At times, that’s a valid criticism for this book. Miriam and Ronnee’s philosophizing tends to lag, especially when they’re feeling sorry for themselves. But, often, the lengthy passages tracing their thoughts are necessary. Otherwise, the two wouldn’t be the full, multifaceted characters they are. And their development is important.

The plot is well-crafted, but more than anything else, this is a story of two strong women, struggling to understand their relationship and even their own identities.