The term "72 Hour Hold" refers to the three-day period that a hospital can legally hold a mentally ill person against his or her will. The person must be a danger to self and others, and must be critically disabled.

Keri, the haggard protagonist of Bebe Moore Campbell's new novel, knows the term and the criteria all too well. Her 18-year-old daughter, Trina, suffers from bipolar disorder.

"The joke we told at that first support group meeting," Keri says, "was that we were the only black people in America willing to admit having mental illness in our families. 'Hell, being black is hard enough,' I'd said. 'Please don't add crazy.' "

The subject matter of the novel is fascinating, and Moore Campbell does an excellent job of revealing the stigma of mental illness, compounded with the stigma of race. Even so, the story line quickly loses steam. Keri narrates so many of Trina's bipolar episodes that they begin to feel redundant. And Keri's situation begins to feel frustratingly hopeless.

Trina didn't always have a mental illness. Keri tells us that it manifests the summer after her high school graduation: "a nightmare summer of long nights, smashed glass, and broken dreams." Trina stays up all night, blaring music, carrying on dozens of disjointed conversations. She paints herself in garish makeup and dresses in sluttish, see-through clothes.

When Keri tries to intervene, Trina screams insults at her, calls her a Demon Queen, a devil, and accuses her of killing her real mother. Keri finally calls the cops when Trina slaps and then punches her.

Keri is devastated not only by her daughter's out-of-control behavior, but also by the loss of her dreams. Trina had been a model high school student with good grades and lots of friends. She'd been admitted to Brown and was supposed to begin in the fall. Keri calls the college to request delayed admission. For her own sanity, she finds a support group to help her deal with her daughter.

Her ex-husband, Clyde, isn't much help: He's out of touch with his family and the black community. A conservative radio talk show host, he rants against liberal topics such as affirmative action. He's convinced that Trina is just going through a phase.

Meanwhile, Keri counts Trina's pills, drops her off daily at her outpatient treatment center, and deals with yet another episode.

These episodes get worse, one after the other, until the book begins to feel more like a log than a novel. Keri is willing to do anything to help her daughter, but Trina is not ready for help. It's a classic standoff, and the book stalls.

Halfway through the novel, though, the story line picks up again - and this is where Moore Campbell's creativity really shines .

A woman in Keri's support group discovers a daring alternative to the public mental health system. She tells Keri about a secret group of psychologists and psychiatrists who run a facility in a remote area. The group treats mentally ill people who are too sick to accept help. The mentally ill are kidnapped by their relatives and transported from household to household until they reach the facility - a plan modeled on the underground railroad.

Slavery and the underground railroad are running themes throughout the novel, and they work well in the context of mental illness.

A spokesperson for the secret group tells Keri, "Mental illness is a kind of slavery. Our movement is about freeing people too. We won't always have to hide and run and do our work in the dark. The day is coming when people with brain diseases won't be written off or warehoused, when everyone will know that recovery is possible."

The spokesperson is optimistic, and Keri is at her wit's end, desperate enough to kidnap her daughter and embark on the journey.

The journey is rigorous - mentally and physically. And as anyone could have guessed, it is Keri who changes the most - not her daughter.

She struggles to find acceptance of her daughter's illness and to let go of the dreams she had for her. In her own way, she comes to terms with the way things have become. In the process, she comes to terms with her own mother and her own identity.

Though it's sometimes a repetitive tale, 72 Hour Hold is colorfully punctuated with Moore Campbell's unique insight and creative bursts. Her take on the issues of race and mental illness are intriguing, ultimately trumping the book's flaws and proving it a worthy read.

Ashley Simpson Shires is a freelance writer living in Boulder.