SUNK ISLAND (221 pp.)Hubert NicholsonCoward-McCann ($3.50).
Roger Wellincroft is told by his father to "go coortin' " Louisa Kilner for her "brass." To the God-fearing Yorkshire farm folk of the East Riding, brass is land, the deity they worship six days of the week. Louisa is to inherit her father's farm on Sunk Islanda flat, melancholy spit of land reclaimed from the Humber estuary. To Sunk Island, Roger goes a-coortin'.
He finds Louisa a soft-spoken girl with pudding-round cheeks and plain as rain. But her younger sister Ida is another matterlithe, shrill, dark and electric. Roger kisses her on a dare, and shortly...