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By Steve Yarbrough
Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN 0-375-41478-9
$23

One finishes Steve Yarbrough's "Prisoners of War" with a strong feeling that the author respects his readers. This is not common today.

An earnest author understands that an intelligent reader can fill in the gaps between what is left out on the page, and with some directional arrows, can fill in between the sentences. The writer and reader are then in collaboration (and this is truly the aim of good writing), with the reader going as deep in the well as the writer has allowed the bucket to drop.

Good writing points. The reader ponders.

Yarbrough has borrowed an often-overlooked piece of our Mississippi history to underpin his story. During World War II there were dozens of prisoner of war camps across the United States. Mississippi was home to several. The Mississippi Delta was home to a German camp, and as the local cotton farms were often short of field hands, the prisoners were rented out to the farmers as day labor.

Mentally scarred by the war, hometown boy Marty Stark is reassigned from overseas battle to guard duty at the prisoner of war camp. The adjustment is not easy, "The sensation Marty had been experiencing lately - that something in his chest was dissolving, moving from one state to another, from solid to viscous liquid - came on strongly."

Dan Timms, having just lost his father, a World War I veteran, to suicide, insists that he will sign up for the service in a few months when he is old enough, leaving his widowed mother alone. L.C., a black friend of Dan's and a co-worker, has avoided the draft because an influential merchant values his low wage labor. Knowing his place and his assigned role in a segregated society, in private moments with Dan he is one of the story's keenest observers. L.C. worried to himself, "It wouldn't be any time before they'd discover he didn't have a draft card and put him in uniform. And he'd be damned if he meant to die like a dog for folks who thought he was a mule."

The plot moves along briskly, tension builds, the characters are true to form, and the ending is the unexpected ending that a reader expects to a good story. On the surface, and going no deeper, this is a fine novel meticulously written. Going deeper into the well though brings rewards.

Guided by the book's title, it would appear that the prisoners of war that Yarbrough is referring to are the captured German soldiers. But, through two or three subtle and intricate subplots, Yarbrough may be leading us elsewhere and asking us to ponder just which characters truly are the prisoners.

L.C. remains a noticeable prisoner of The Civil War. He is restrained physically from pursuing the life he desires. The entire culture of the time, inclusive of both whites and blacks, are imprisoned in a narrow-minded existence, a double standard of Jim Crow and segregation that they cannot find the foresight to move beyond together. The last battle of The Civil War with soldiers may have been in 1865, but the war raged on in suppression, high voltage tension that often led to violence, and an economy stuck in labor-intensive agriculture.

Yarbrough is too deft to ever editorialize or explicate the conditions of the time, but it is possible to sense and smell it in the fabric of the story. In a conversation between Dan and Rosetta, the mother of L.C., about whether L.C. ever lies to Dan, Rosetta says, "Course he do. And lying within limits is alright." "That ain't what it says in the Bible," responds Dan. "Colored folks' Bible or white folks?" retorts Rosetta. The double standard was present in all things, including religion.

War veterans often remain prisoners, though they may be physically free, for the remainder of their lives. Dan's father, a World War I veteran, said to a family friend and fellow soldier that he "hated like hell for [Dan] to see some of the things [we] saw, to do the kinds of things we did," in war. Dan's father continued by saying that, "He'd do anything he could think of to keep [Dan] out of the army. Anything." The next day, Dan's father shot himself.

Several of the chapters are too short and fold up too neatly. This may be a result of Yarbrough's skill as a short story writer, but with an author as obviously talented as he is, it has the effect of leaving one wanting more. "Prisoners of War" is a superb novel, but deeper and longer reflection from this clearly capable writer into the interior lives of the key characters would have undoubtedly been rewarding. This is by no means a flaw in this book, but rather a suggestion and a prodding for the next novel.

The serious novelist's role is to attempt to make sense of life, telling a good story along the way. "Prisoners of War" fills this order quite handsomely.