Heading West

With a mesmerizing richness of feeling, character, and suspense, Doris Betts' novel takes us into the life of a bright, spiky, vital woman in her thirties, fleeing the murderous boredom of her spinster life- and into her deepening and mysterious complicity with the unbalanced stranger who has kidnaped her. It starts in North Carolina, Nancy Finch-librarian, choir alto, solicitous Elder daughter and Big Sister-has consented once again (and against her real wishes) to join her dumb sister, Faye, and Faye's awful husband, Eddie, on a vacation trip through Blue Ridge Mountains. Suddenly-in the…