SOURCE: "The Storyteller's Gift," in Detroit Free Press, Sec. E, June 6, 1994, pp. E1, E3.

[In the essay below, Davis favorably assesses The Serpent's Gift and relates Lee's upbringing and education, her influences, and the novel's publication history.]

Helen Elaine Lee casts her spells mostly with blues. She invents seamless blue skies and small water-blue wildflowers. She defines comfort as cerulean and passion as cobalt.

After she works her magic with the tranquil-seductive-scorching hues of blue, she conjures up some mighty tall tales about a snake who finds renewal in the shedding of her skin and two African-American families who learn to pull light from darkness.

Lee, who grew up in Detroit, is the author of The Serpent's Gift, a novel that chronicles the intertwined lives of two families from before World War I through the early 1970s. Released in April, it has garnered rave reviews around the country...