FICTION

WINTER RETURN by John Espey (John Daniel: $18.95; 176 pp.) Back in the days when family secrets festered for generations rather than being aired before Oprah Winfrey and millions of viewers, Tom Jerome drives east from Pasadena. He has two missions: to sell the “Wyoming acreage” that has teased his family with visions of hidden mineral wealth; and to settle the Iowa estate of his long-dead Grandfather Lloyd, a banker whose reputation for wisdom and virtue has hung over him for 30 years.

This novel is, in a sense, a sequel to John Espey’s “Strong Drink, Strong Language,” his memoir of growing up as a missionary’s son in Shanghai. As he drives, Jerome relives his post-World War I arrival in Iowa at age 9, fresh from China, baffled by the free-and-easy codes of American life as well as by the Lloyd family’s unexplained reticences.

Espey intends Jerome’s trip, his final unmasking of the secrets, to be the culmination of a lifelong struggle to escape the “black hood” of repression, guilt, Calvinist dogma and man-without-a-country syndrome. Jerome finds freedom internally, learning to “fake the ritual, traditional game and vary it with personal rules.” His metaphor for life is “Leaf Out,” a version of tennis in which the scoring is altered when the ball hits fallen leaves scattered on the court.

Interesting ideas, a taut structure; the trouble with “Winter Return” lies in the execution. The dialogue is tinny. Scenes that beg for full visual treatment lack color. Faulty timing in the release of key information--in juggling the framing of the story and the flashbacks--blunts the emotional impact. And finally--one secret that should have remained a secret--glib, smug Tom Jerome isn’t quite as likable as Espey thinks he is.