BOOK REVIEW / FICTION : A Deconstructed Home on the Bleak Range : STRANGE ANGELS <i> by Jonis Agee</i> ; Ticknor & Fields $21.95, 405 pages

“Strange angels,” Cody’s mother often said, “You’re one. . . . Maybe we’re all strange angels, skating through the night sky toward some distant home.”

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Caroline’s son grows up to fulfill that prophecy. Sent to work on his father’s ranch at 14, after he fatally shot a man he assumed to be an intruder, Cody behaves like the illegitimate son he believes himself to be. His mother committed suicide shortly after the shooting, and these two events combine to blight his view of himself, distorting his relationship with the rest of his oddly constituted family and with the entire community.

Continually at odds with Heywood Bennett’s eldest, publicly acknowledged son Arthur, Cody allies himself with his half-sister Kya, Bennett’s daughter by an American Indian mistress.

He and Kya remain the outsiders, united against their smug and priggish brother, seizing every opportunity to resist and defy Arthur.

Fearless to the point of self-destruction, with a limitless capacity for the kind of hard work that leaves a man too exhausted for thought, Cody becomes the most valuable hand on the Bennett ranch, traits that should endear him to Arthur but do not. Adored by her indulgent father, Kya behaves even more outrageously after his death, scandalizing the town and alienating Arthur, who loves her in his own wintry way.

Arthur is stunned when his father’s will divides the estate equally among the three children--each the offspring of a different mother and each with a compelling set of reasons for resenting their autocratic father. Arthur’s simmering hostility toward Cody escalates into overt rage; Kya’s rebellious wildness takes the form of a promiscuity that threatens to make her a pariah in the small Nebraska ranching community.

Each chapter in this powerful novel is introduced by a brief epigraph. Many are excerpts from Cody’s mother’s poignant journals, from local newspapers or from books of Lakota Indian lore. Essential to our understanding of the Nebraska setting, these paragraphs expand the impact of the novel. Although we never meet Cody’s mother, through these lyrical passages we identify with the plight of a sensitive woman living alone with her son in this rough country. The short paragraphs of Lakota philosophy emphasize the unbridgeable gulf between the ranchers and the Indians from whom they wrested their holdings.

In addition to the Bennetts, “Strange Angels” abounds in characters whose roles are by no means subsidiary. Cody falls in love with Latta Jaboy, the widow who runs the adjoining ranch, a woman of uncommon complexity and rare strength. Their passion supplies another dimension to the already intense emotional level created by the confrontations among the Bennetts.

Joseph, an Indian who has become a virtual hermit in search of spiritual enlightenment, functions as the conscience of the story, a pivotal figure in the transformations that occur. A sometime hand on the Bennett ranch, Joseph offers Cody the only real affection he has known since his mother’s death.

Ultimately, Joseph will be responsible for the rehabilitation of Kya and for the fragile rapprochement created between ranchers and Indians.

Although “Strange Angels” is primarily an exploration of individual character, the drama is played against a stunning backdrop of the Nebraska sand hills: a wild, lonely and still largely unknown part of America, perhaps the last vestige of a still unmythologized West.

This is harsh, unglamorous country, isolated and dangerous. Ranch work is grinding, filthy and unrelenting; rodeos are brutal, and drunkenness often offers the only possible solace and escape. The author is unflinching and graphic in her description of the realities that have formed and shaped her characters.

In creating a world seldom encountered in contemporary fiction, Agee has virtually reinvented the Western novel.