THE STORY SISTERS. Alice Hoffman. Shaye Areheart. 325 pages. $25.

Readers who follow the maddeningly uneven Alice Hoffman have learned to cast a wary eye on each new offering. Will it be Good Alice, poser of moral dilemmas and rich portraitist of family life (Blue Diary, Skylight Confessions)? Or will it be Bad Alice, blatantly careless plotter and outrageous overdoer of the magic-beneath-the-surface-of-our-lives shtick (The Probable Future, The Third Angel)?

The Story Sisters is In-Between Alice: excessive and overdetermined but ultimately so moving that it overwhelms these faults. Elv, Meg and Claire Story share a secret imaginary world, Arnelle, complete with a private language that they speak to each other. Yes, Hoffman is back in fairy-tale territory. Arnelle made its appearance after 11-year-old Elv rescued 8-year-old Claire from a child molester and was abused in her stead, the random intrusion of malevolent fate that this author has explored many times before.

Grin and bear it, readers, because a brilliantly detailed delineation of ever-shifting power relations among siblings and a beautiful portrait of love's redemptive power are twined around the fey Arnelle material and grim recollections of the abuse. (Still, Hoffman should trust her readers to get the point -- Elv will never be the same; Claire feels guilty -- without repetition.)

The main narrative begins when Elv is 15; she's reckless, taking drugs and sleeping around, to the horror of sensible Meg, who knows nothing about the abduction her sister endured four years earlier. Claire, meanwhile, seesaws between her siblings but increasingly turns to Meg.

Their mother decides the only thing to do is incarcerate Elv in rehab, despite the carping of her self-absorbed ex-husband, one of the novel's many vividly realized secondary characters. At the brutal facility, Elv meets a junkie who provides her first taste of heroin but also brings her the love she's always dreamed about, ''the kind that turns you inside out.'' After Elv comes home, she's responsible for a death that estranges her from the family, but a series of poignant scenes shows her tentative attempts to reconnect.

Many years after the party that introduced us to the Story sisters, a wedding in Paris provides them a tender opportunity to reconcile. This radiant finale reminds us what a satisfying novelist Hoffman can be, when she feels like it.

Wendy Smith reviewed this book for The Washington Post.

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