A Cautionary Tale For Our Consumer Culture. By Ellen Winter Lonesome Standard Time (Harcourt Brace), by Dana Andrew Jennings. Hardcover, $19. IN HUNT'S STATION, the all but abandoned waste dump of a town where Dana Andrew Jennings' third novel takes place, everyone operates on Lonesome Standard Time (also the book's title). "Lives in Hunt's Station are spent in a ruthless present tense," Jennings tells us. "The past, that dried-up creek, carries no solace. And the future...waits somewhere beyond...the Crossroads." No babies have been born in nearly 20 years, and the dogs and cats are too old to chase each other. One of the characters imagines her DNA looks like "a rotted, gray ladder left out in the rain and wind and snow too long, its rungs broken or eaten away." This town of Hunt's Station, rendered by Jennings in chilling detail, was bought by a man named Sanborn Hunt decades before the novel begins. Though seemingly wealthy, he lives in a trailer where he can watch the trucks arriving to fill backwoods "lagoons" he's created with a black and slimy waste whose origins and contents are never really made clear. We know only this: the stuff's poisonous. It burns underground. The smoke wafts through a neighborhood called, appropriately enough, Fire Town, and flames occasionally dart from the earth. The town's residents share a hacking cough and a lassitude that makes it impossible for them to leave. The only things most of them care about anymore are Willybrew ("especially bitter at the bottle's bottom") and the "singings," nighttime meetings at which the town's residents communicate in the only way it appears they still can--through bluegrass music. Into this scene drives Hank Rogers, the only Hunt's Station resident to escape, albeit temporarily, the town's clutches. He arrives on the tail of a murder, and as the novel unfolds we learn why he felt he had to return. We also learn about the victim's manuscript--an exposé on Hunt's Station called "The Dirtiest Town in America," which is stolen by someone after the murder. It's easy to assume that Sanborn Hunt, described in the manuscript as the man who "ruled and ruined" Hunt's Station, is behind the murder and theft. The surprising truth is not revealed until the novel's fiery end. As a cautionary tale this book works very well. As a novel, it was not a complete success for me, in part because Jennings piles on the darkness, delivering it by the truckload like the 50-gallon drums that arrive day and night at the lagoons in Hunt's Station. After a while, it became almost too much for this reader (and I don't consider myself faint-hearted) to bear. Not many of the literary novels I've read in recent years tackle subjects as weighty as the one addressed here, the "self-inflicted cancer" of a community that has allowed itself to be poisoned. When a writer takes on something this heavy, the writing needs to be deft as the fastest picker. There were times when Jennings took my breath away with this very sort of quick-moving simplicity. For instance, as the protagonist makes his ill-fated return to Hunt's Station, he notes the dirt road has narrowed, and remembers when it was "wide enough for two pickups to pass, a mutt lolling serenely out each window." Later on, one of the characters observes the smoke-laden air "smell(s) like snakes." At moments like these, Jennings writes like the best of players--he makes it sound easy. At other times, however, Jennings piles on one metaphor too many, and it's as if all the strings have been banged at once. Again I'm reminded of the bluegrass music that rings throughout this novel. There's a delicious irony when a fiddle careens happily beneath lyrics of lament. I'd like to have seen more of that sort of thing here. These are stylistic concerns, and every reader will experience Lonesome Standard Time differently. For the setting alone, I'd recommend this book highly. With characters as delectably seedy as Dirty Willy, you can hardly go wrong. But what's really important about this book are the questions it raises. Hunt's Station, consumer of toxic waste, is like the raincrows that are its only remaining birds. This reader was forced to wonder: As members of a society where we're all labeled "consumers," how much like carrion crows are we? Dana Andrew Jennings will sign copies of his latest novel from noon to 1 p.m. Sunday, April 13, at Borders Books and Music, 4235 N. Oracle Road. He is on tour promoting his new children's book, Me, Dad and No. 6. Call 292-1331 for information.

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