Giving faith to the wrong gods

racially discordant country, and Bebe Moore Campbell is black. So, they

make an unusual pair, these lifelong girlfriends, Robin still living in

their home town of Philadelphia, and Bebe perched on a Los Angeles

hilltop, the better to spot the first fires and fractures of

California's expected Armageddon.

High School brought them together, but it was adulthood which

reassured Campbell, at least, that this friendship was based on

authentic regard, not curiosity, not condescension. It took that length

of time to feel comfortable in Robin's presence, she says, because --

even when the best motives prevail -- black people in white company

still find themselves on edge, ''waiting for the shoe to drop'', and

vestiges of racism to tumble out and scorch all hope.

Yet in the land where opportunity stands as a flagrant shrine on every

block, trust has never been a straightforard matter, not even in the

ruling club of whites. What makes Campbell's latest novel so relevant

and forceful is its depiction of a world so much on guard against

everyone it sees virtue in betrayal.

Set in the uneasy aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, Brothers and

Sisters' central characters are not the ethnic underclass but a cast of

banking executives whose instinctive discrimination travels by stealth,

driving on their careers but muddling intimate emotions. Esther Jackson

is one of a handful of black officials at Angel City National Bank.

Ambition has stranded her beyond her race, leaving her with fewer

options on whom to marry and her very success merely aggravates Esther's

own pain at the black community's unremitting sense of loss.

This is Campbell's third novel although she has been an author for 16

years, producing such non-fiction works as Successful Women, Angry Men,

and Backlash in the Two-career Marriage. Her insights into the shabby

sophistication of American corporate life are particularly good but it

is her incisive ability to go to the heart of contemporary problems

which makes her a compelling storyteller.

She sees her success as an indication that despite the lingering

imbalance of power, opportunities for blacks are improving in certain

fields. ''They used to say that black people didn't read books, that

they didn't buy books, and that white folk wouldn't buy books written by

blacks. These myths have finally been laid to rest and it's a good time

from that point of view.''

But her optimism does not extend much beyond the immediate horizon.

''My generation, the children of the fifties and sixties, were the first

of wholesale integration in America and we seized the chances with what

could be called an immigrant hunger. But among one's own people very

often the person who breaks out and succeeds is alternately praised and

damned. It still takes Herculean effort to get free of social and racial

obstacles and not every sister and brother can find the required

strength.''

Her own life has always been solidly middle-class. Campbell is married

to a Los Angeles banker and each has an adult child by a first marriage.

Her own parents were both college-educated and she, an only child, was

encouraged to excel. ''But it's always hard for the strivers, and for

educated black women today it's harder than ever because although they

have more chances they do not have the emotional back-up at home.

Neither do they have obvious mentors to guide them through the corporate

maze.''

Like every child, Bebe Moore Campbell was tutored on the adage that

you had to be as good as a white person to get half as far. ''I didn't

want to pass on that dictum to my daughter because I was anxious not to

force pressures on her. But then I saw that she thought life was going

to be as easy for her as it was for a white kid. So, I had to point out

that her father had a master's degree in business administration but his

boss had a college diploma. 'Now why do you think that is?' I asked her.

And that was frightening and shocking to her, in a way it had not been

for me.''

Part of Campbell's skill is her convincing portrayal of white and

black sensibilities. None of her characters exists simply as urban

texture, but she herself feels her colour every day. ''I was on a book

tour in Mississippi a few years ago and my driver was white. We went for

lunch together and as we walked into the restaurant I noticed I was the

only black person there.'' She never felt her colour so intensely as

that moment, everyone looking at her with contempt, wondering about the

significance of this mixed-race couple.

Since then her adopted hometown has known riot, fire, earthquake, and

flood, and of these the violence was, for Campbell, the most terrifying.

''The quake and aftershocks were very frightening but they were over in

seconds. The riots were a three-day war. I looked down the hillside and

I saw flames in the downtown districts being fuelled by uncontrollable

human anger.'' She hopes it was an aberration, but much about Los

Angeles still suggests hostile territory where the only victor is rough

nature of any sort.

* Brothers and Sisters by Bebe Moore Campbell, #14.99, Heinemann.