Three sisters in 19th-century Brooklyn

Emily Barton's second novel, after her arresting and acclaimed debut "The Testament of Yves Gundron," is a meticulous, tightly worked piece of historical fiction about three strong and independent sisters in early 19th-century Brooklyn.

Prudence and Temperance have inherited their drowned father's gin distillery, which they run effectively between them; at the same time, Prue works feverishly -- with the help of her mute, artistic sister Pearl and surveyor husband Ben -- to bring to fruition her long-held dream of building a great and unlikely bridge over the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

The story of the three women, their gin, and their bridge is told partly in letters from Prue to her pregnant daughter Recompense. Prue writes with a candor moderated only by an emotional restraint typical of her time and place, and her letters, like the prose around them, have an authenticity and uprightness that's enjoyable to read. It's easy to lose yourself in the full world of this well-wrought and well-researched narrative and in its richly textured phrases, attention to detail and elegant idiom.

One small caution: To let yourself linger within these pages, you'll need to give yourself over to the pace of a different era, which, of course, is one of the chief delights of good period fiction or indeed 19th-century fiction itself. "Brookland" is written with a certain ponderousness of action and thoroughness of description -- particularly interesting to me were the explanations of the basics of distilling. If you suffer from ADD and are passionately addicted to Grand Theft Auto, "Fear Factor," and crashing along river-beds in your souped-up ATV, chances are this one isn't for you.

Of course, in that case, you're probably not reading book reviews.

In contrast to "Yves Gundron," which was situated in a fantastic and puzzling land, equally strange to all readers, "Brookland" is likely to feel pleasantly familiar to Brooklynites and possibly even New York City tourists, who will recognize well-known streets and subway stops in the names of long-dead characters identified in passing around the edges of the story -- Joralemon, Boerum, Schermerhorn, Remsen, Cortelyou.

And "Brookland" is broadly accessible in a way "Yves Gundron" arguably was not. It is a straightforward tale told from a close point of view, personal, material, palpable. If it lacks the philosophical range and mystery of Barton's first book, it gives us other pleasures in their place. These include the strong feeling of being in a certain close-built house two centuries ago, on the edge of a dirty river with Western civilization spreading into the frontier around us. There's also a sense of how real and present the past is, how brief a time has passed since Brooklyn still had farms and freshly felled forests. And it lets us see how fast the decades and centuries fly by, towns turn to cities and neighborhoods into institutions, generations die off and our great-great grandparents give way to us.

In the evenness of tone and pacing and the stable voice of Prue, whose bridge-building ambition represents the single voluptuous dream of an otherwise grounded and pragmatic character, Barton has crafted a tale so smooth that when crisis finally occurs it descends on the Winships' world like a Deus ex machina. We've seen quiet desperation in this intelligent and somewhat sad-minded family from the beginning, and we've seen superstition and more than a glint of magical thinking in Prue's unquestioning convictions about the destructive power of thought, but we don't expect fiery gestures and vanishing acts. Without fear of spoiling, little can be confessed about the culmination of the quiet emotional drama between two of the three sisters; suffice it to say that the reader who likes dramatic denouements should be well-satisfied.

The deliberate primness of Barton's tone -- common to both "Yves Gundron" and "Brookland," which are otherwise completely different books -- makes her a strange and rare object among contemporary American writers. In a world of speed and irony and obliqueness, her unhurried gait and formal diction catch the gaze and hold it. She thinks deeply about her subjects; her imagination has unusually wide bounds; the austerity of her voice at once offers and withholds revelation. Lovers of historical fiction should not hesitate to pick up "Brookland," and for those who like to peruse the stacks for still unread gems there are few recent debuts more conceptually impressive than "Yves Gundron." Barton is one to watch.

(Lydia Millet has published five books of fiction, including, most recently, the novel "Oh Pure and Radiant Heart.")