In the Fields of Fatherless Children

A family struggles to survive in Appalachian mining country in the intense latest from Steele (Greasewood Creek). In the 1960s, 16-year-old June Branham is pregnant and unsure which of two boys is the father. She’s in love with one, Ellis Akers, but the other raped her, and she doesn’t know where to turn. Ellis and her brother, Tom, have gone to fight in Vietnam, and her stepfather, Isom, has long held a hateful grudge against Ellis’s mixed-race family, out of both racial prejudice and resentment over the affair June’s mother, Bethel, had with Ellis’s father. After June gives birth to her daughter, Grace, Isom kidnaps the baby and hides her, prompting June to make a series of life-altering decisions that are both courageous and dangerous. Along the way, Steele conjures a stark sense of place, depicting the strip-mined landscape, where heavy rains cause the overworked hills to collapse and floods swallow up homes and people, as forlorn at best and malevolent at worst. Though the ending feels rushed, Steele mostly sustains the epic proportions of her ravishing story. This is worth a look. (Mar.)