This first novel explores the stickily enduring bonds of love. Nine characters speak in alternating chapters: a reluctant psychic; a selfish, philandering husband; a sensitive, eccentric one; a finicky undertaker; a young soldier; an unhappy little girl; a Haitian migrant; and two widows, one merry, one grief stricken. This unlikely cast inhabits a narrative spanning 30 years. Some, like Soleil Marie, a sugarcane laborer, or Inez, who can't avoid seeing the future, speak with startling vividness. Others, like the child Luella, are less convincing. All are trapped behind the sweetly poisoned bars of the "sugar cage"--a "sign" in the dregs of one character's glass. Inez spots it: "bars glistening like white sand," a sure sign "she was going to let love eat her up." Runaway emotions devour some, others struggle to both love and survive. A Southern gothic tale, magically imaginative, yet harshly real. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/91.