The Reserve
By Russell Banks
HarperCollins, 2008, $24.95

The rugged, unblemished Adirondack State Park in upstate New York provides a perfect escape for rich people during troubled times in this big, juicy novel. And it gets really interesting if we're talking 1937 during the rise of fascism, the civil war in Spain, and the Depression. Main character Jordan Groves, who flies around in a seaplane, is local artist made good. A womanizer, adventurer, and communist sympathizer, he has a reckless affair with 30-year-old, twice-divorced socialite Vanessa Cole, who seems intent upon embarrassing her prominent father and, as it turns out, with good reason.