SOURCE: "Dancing in the Shadows of a Fearful Childhood," in The Boston Globe, January 30, 1994, p. A15.

[In the following, Dockrell offers praise for Hula, discussing Shea's focus on victimization, abuse, and male-female relationships.]

"Nothing will catch you. Nothing will let you go." So Lisa Shea warns us as she quotes Jorie Graham's Tennessee June in the epigraph to her first novel, Hula. Appropriate as it is, this signpost only hints at the netherworld that lies ahead, a limbo-like place where hiding becomes a high-stakes game of survival. It is a world of stark contrasts—light and darkness, flowers and ash, innocence and loss. It is a fear-filled place where fantasy is not just the stuff of childhood but a bridge to safety. It is sensuous, harrowing and mesmerizing.

In this slim volume, two sisters come of age in mid-1960s Virginia in the prison that is their back...