Modern Life, Ancient Fear

By SUSAN L. BLAIR

TITLE: ORION

AUTHOR: RALPH GRAVES

PUBLISHER: BARRICADE; 396 PAGES; $21.95

THE BOTTOM LINE: A father recounts in fiction his daughter's fight to recover from a devastating crime.

The dream of picking money off trees has become virtual reality in the late 20th century with the invention of the cash-dispensing machine, but like many dreams, it has a primitive dark side: the fear that easy pickings are susceptible to easy loss. And for women, there's more at risk than money.

The everyday experience of getting cash from the corner bank after hours is the jumping-off point for Orion. Nancy Whittredge, a reporter for an all-news radio station, is accosted after leaving the bank lobby by two thugs with a gun who take her to an abandoned garage and rape her repeatedly. Later she's forced to return to the machine and withdraw the rest of the money from her account.

Graves, a former managing editor of LIFE, based this novel on his daughter's experience as the target of just such a brutal sexual assault and robbery. He deals swiftly with the crime, then goes on to outline its aftermath in meticulous detail, from the hours Nancy spends combing through police mug shots to the frustrating plea bargaining necessary to close the case. The author presents what appears to be a best-case scenario (the victim sustains no lasting physical injuries, all officialdom is uniformly kind and civil) while managing to skewer upper-middle-class denial in the face of shocking events. But the woman's constant tug-of-war between pursuing justice and putting the horror behind her is a painfully real -- and often hopelessly contradictory -- struggle the reader shares at every turn.