THE INNOCENT (370 pp.) Madison JonesHarcourt, Brace ($4.75).
This first novel tells of a Southern prodigal son who returns home too late to recover the world he once spurned. Duncan Welsh had spent seven years as a newspaperman in Northern cities and lost an eye, a wife and all stomach for his job. He heads back to his father's Tennessee valley farm to root himself in the pieties of nature, kinsmen, and feudal loyalties from which he feels he was torn by anonymous city dwelling. But in the bustling regional ferment to which Duncan returns, his attitudes seem romantic, antisocial and outmoded....