Noble Neanderthals

By R.Z. Sheppard

TSUGA'S CHILDREN

by THOMAS WILLIAMS

239 pages. Random House. $7.95.

Tsuga 's Children is a novel that was bound to be written in a time of lowered sights and the repackaging of conventional verities. Thomas Williams, who won the National Book Award in 1975 for The Hair of Harold Roux, now gives us a fantasy spun from the loose threads of The Lord of the Rings, The Whole Earth Catalogue, Carlos Castaneda and the Environmental Protection Agency. Set on a timeless, mythical Western frontier, the novel cultivates a modern delusion. As the author says, "It is a story that I hope might remind its readers that at our best we remember and feel as only children sometimes seem to do: openly, untainted, without guile, paying full attention."

So Williams points us back to pagan nature with the Hemlock family --Daddy Tim, hunter, farmer, "maker of things"; Mother Eugenia, keeper of the kitchen garden and hearth and the two Hemlock children, Son Arn, 9, and Daughter Jen, 7. This is the family primeval, whose only contact with civilization is the annual visit of the Traveler, who trades lead shot, gunpowder, needles, salt and flint for the Hemlocks' superbly crafted knives and moccasins.

No Master Charge, no revolving credit, no conspicuous consumption. But one epochal year the Traveler does not come. Instead, a mysterious old woman appears, bearing boxes of medicinal herbs. She speaks an unknown language but her eye is a window on the uncharted territory beyond the mountains. It is a valley inhabited by a hunting-gathering tribe known as "the people" and savage cattle herders called the Chigai.

Corrupting Culture. Jen gets lost in the valley while looking for a cow --and Arn goes after her. He proves himself a doughty little camper as he saves his sister from freezing and starvation. The children then tramp from one cliffhanger to the next before rejoining their despairing parents.

Tsuga's Children works well as an adventure fantasy. But the author is not content with writing a rousing tale. He must moralize from Rousseau's creaky premise that culture corrupts mankind. His hunter-gatherers live in an idealized balance with nature; the Chigai are brutal villains because they keep animals as prisoners to be eaten. There are echoes here of William Golding's The Inheritors, in which Homo sapiens wipes out the noble Neanderthal. Golding's text was suited for the grim '50s. Williams' happier ending is blended for the granola '70s. R.Z. Sheppard

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