Is there a more fraught, vilified figure in American letters in worldwide letters, perhaps than the mother who abandons a child? To be a mother who goes away, physically or emotionally, is widely considered to be a mother who turns monstrous, a towering figure who inflicts enduring, ne plus ultra pain upon the offspring she leaves behind. But what if that departure isn't necessarily monstrous; what if the wound of maternal abandonment could be not only alleviated, but also, perhaps, healed by other kinds of love? This possibility underlies Jacqueline Woodson's much anticipated, profoundly moving novel " Red at the Bone".