Winds across the Sky

Journalist, poet, biographer and self-published novelist Foster ( Bearers of the Sun ) here essays an ecological parable. But this tale about a whale, a tree and typically doleful humans--a disconsolate actress; a hapless Vietnam vet reporter, a budding novelist--offers little more than insipid anthropomorphism and cliched pseudo-philosophy. Helga, a humpback whale, is making her way north to summer migratory waters off Alaska when she and a 2700-year-old redwood ``commune together.'' Reporter John Bratton also communes with the tree, which is finally felled by a greedy corporation, while fading star Monique Dumont dreams of the whale, endures a out-of-body near-death experience after an auto accident and decides to devote her life to the cause of whales. She meets John, who has drawn new purpose for his life from the redwood's death, and at a French restaurant they become ``one in the flame of love.'' Lessons in photosynthesis and environmental precautions further burden Foster's vapid prose and mundane message.