Acclaimed novelist Alice McDermott returns to the writing scene with her first book since the celebrated "Charming Billy" won the National Book Award in 1998.

This time around, in "Child of My Heart," McDermott's young protagonist (and narrator) is a 15-year-old brainy beauty named Theresa. Set over the course of a Long Island summer in the early 1960s, "Child of My Heart" reveals that Theresa's parents relocated from Queens to the 'burbs not to get away from the big bad city but because they hope Theresa will marry above her station.

Joining Theresa on her rounds as local dog-walker and baby-sitter is her timid younger cousin Daisy. Daisy who turns out to be the title character is being given a much-needed summer of respite from her many brothers and sisters in Queens.

The surface action of "Child of My Heart" is mundane stuff such as beach visits and diaper changes. The real action in McDermott's novel is under the surface disease, adult corruption, the power of art and Theresa's burgeoning sexuality.

Ultimately, this is a novel about a girl on the brink of womanhood. Thus, big questions about sex, art, death swim wildly within Theresa. McDermott renders these conflicts insightfully, though at times with an ambiguity which seems almost muddled. Though there are many sections which explore the undeniably titillating world of adult sexuality, at some basic level, "Child of My Heart" could simply be a "Huckleberry Finn" for Irish Catholic girls, with the adult world of decay and death casting an increasingly dark shadow over the idyll of youth.

If, at times, McDermott does tax readers with long blocks of text, she is still one of our most interesting Irish-American writers thanks to a subtlety and poetry which are hard to come by elsewhere. ($23 / 242 pages / Farrar Straus Giroux)