The Rules of Love and Law
The action of Russell’s atmospheric, and very accomplished novel, opens in Baltimore in 1938 and gets off to a quick start: Juliana Corbeau, the teenage daughter of a wealthy family in one of the city’s most exclusive neighborhoods, is assaulted in whites-only Wyman Park by a black man who grabs her while chattering frantically. The two tumble to the ground, and just then Will Stahl, a young son of immigrants from the city’s row houses, spots the commotion and rushes to Juliana’s aid.
In their own ways, both Juliana and Will are unconventional free thinkers, and Russell uses this Titanic-style pairing as the anchor of his story, which ranges confidently across the entire first half of the twentieth century. Through the viewpoints of Will and Juliana, and a small cast of secondary characters, Russell dramatizes the aftermath of the Great Depression, the outbreak of war in Europe, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the stuttering racial progress of the new century. It is all very adroitly done, and although Russell’s dialogue can sometimes be a bit wooden, his sense of pacing is assured enough to carry the whole narrative forward. A promising first novel.
