SOURCE: A review of The Serpent's Gift, in Kirkus Reviews, Vol. LXII, No. 4, February 15, 1994, p. 166.

[In the following review, the critic relates the plot of The Serpent's Gift.]

[Helen Elaine Lee's The Serpent's Gift is a] richly textured first novel that begins with lyrical evocations of loss and love in two intertwined African-American families, but which later becomes more synopsis than saga.

In a nameless midwestern city, in 1910, the already fragile marriage of Eula and Ontario Smalls ends with Ontario's fatal fall while cleaning windows. Eula, with children Helen Elaine Lee

Vesta and baby LaRue, is taken in by neighbors Ruby and Polaris Staples. The families had first met when Eula, badly beaten by Ontario, had fled with her two children and Ruby had been the only neighbor on the street willing to take her in. The two families now begin to live together with remarkable ease. Young...