(Doubleday; 343 pages; $25.95) Reviewed by Debra Spark San Francisco Chronicle, Copyright 2010 Here's the uncheery premise of Ayelet Waldman's new novel, 'Red Hook Road': A bride and groom are killed in a car accident on the way from their wedding ceremony to their reception. Just when their families and friends are poised for a celebration, they get the bad news. The novel explores what happens next. It is, you might argue, James Agee's 'A Death in the Family,' but with all the parameters changed. In this case, the story focuses on two financially and socially distinct families. The bride -- Becca Copaken -- was from a New York family that summers in Maine, and the groom -- John Tetherly -- was a local boat builder, son of Jane, the woman who cleans the house of Iris Copaken, Becca's mother. Though the novel concerns a number of characters, the bulk of the time is spent examining Iris and Jane. The women's differences and their class discomfort leave them at odds, though the tension between them goes largely unspoken. The women don't really like each other, don't really want to deal with each other, as in-laws or as ex-in-laws. And yet they must. Each woman is high-handed and controlling in her own way. The book doesn't only concern the immediate aftermath of the death, though. It's a portrait of the four summers that follow the accident, and each of those summers loosely circles the July Fourth gathering that Ruthie, Becca's sister, instigates as a way to memorialize the late couple. The July Fourth party has long been her parents' tradition, and rather than discontinue it, as might seem appropriate, Ruthie wants to transform the day. Only it doesn't quite work for anyone, including Ruthie. There are several other major players here. These include, on the Copaken side, Daniel, Iris' husband, who loses himself in a renewed passion for boxing, by way of processing his grief, and the aging Mr. Kimmelbrod, Iris' father and a world-famous virtuoso violinist. On the Tetherly side, the father is largely offstage and checked out; he's an alcoholic. But we get to know Matthew, John's brother, and Samantha, an adopted girl who is in Jane's care because her mother is mentally disturbed. Because the Tetherlys and Copakens are connected through their loss, and because they are living in a relatively small place, their paths continue to cross, and while the mothers remain antipathetic, other alliances form, between Matthew and Ruthie and Mr. Kimmelbrod and Samantha, who turns out to be a musical prodigy. Though the story addresses the families' grief, the plot really focuses on the new experiences that the characters have with each other. The results are mixed. In the plus column is the description of grief, as well as the depiction of the feel and culture of Maine for locals and those 'from away.' Waldman perfectly gets the mutual respect that Mainers and those who visit Maine have for the state and its traditions, while highlighting how anxious the territoriality of the locals can make the summer community. The details throughout the book are a strength: lavish, interesting and precise. Even a reader who doesn't know much about, say, boatbuilding, boxing or the makes of various violins can trust that Waldman does. Beyond the knowledge about things, the book itself is always intelligent, and the writing always strong. What's less successful are the characters themselves, who can seem a little one-note. Once you get their defining characteristic, the book seems to rework that characteristic rather than show other facets of the character. The various plot points and behaviors don't always seem all that persuasive, particularly toward the action-filled end of the book, which forces resolution in a way that makes for a number of unlikely coincidences. The book itself shows its seams, insofar as sometimes the temporal lens is pulled back too far, so that, for instance, the coupling and uncoupling of characters doesn't seem particularly convincing. Scenes and episodes tend to be rendered more quickly as the story moves forward, so the novel's best scene is undoubtedly the novel's first lengthy scene, with the lovingly detailed description of the wedding and the wedding reception before the bad news arrives. For all these reasons, it's hard to get absorbed in this novel, to lose oneself in the story, and not be aware that one is reading a book that someone wrote. All this left this reader, at least, admiring different portions of the novel, which were so deftly done, but not really captivated by the book. Debra Spark, a professor of English at Colby College in Maine, is the author, most recently, of the novel 'Good for the Jews' (University of Michigan Press, 2009). 