Divining Blood

Strife on the Mississippi. Delana Mae Walsh, a prodigal daughter, returns home after spending seven years working on a river barge. Her homecoming dredges up all sorts of unusual family secrets and sorrows. In Divinig Blood, McCoy tackles outsize themes, but in individual scenes she also proves herself a superb miniaturist. At times her prose is sluggish and overwrought, but elsewhere it can be wonderfully evocative. Divining Blood is an old-fashioned novel that wonders aloud whether blood really is thicker than water. A-