cover image Family Fortunes

Family Fortunes

Elaine Bissell. St. Martin's Press, $16.95 (452pp) ISBN 978-0-312-28050-5

This is a contemporary romance with a social conscience: war and revolution not only provide a striking background to the story about industrialist Lawrence Kendall but also influence the fate of two generations of the wealthy Kendall family. The novel concentrates first on Elizabeth Stuart and her marriage to Lawrence; then the focus moves to their daughter, Caroline, an independent and beautiful woman whose ambition is to be successful in her own right. Under an assumed name, Caroline trains as a reporter on one of her father's smaller newspapers then graduates to the chain's influential Boston World Inquirer, where she falls in love with star reporter Steve McCallum. When he learns her true identity, he departs in anger for a dangerous assignment in Iran; she is left to come to terms with her conflicted aspirations. A happy ending for the young couple seems insufficient and contrived in a book where too many beginnings never reach completion. Bissell wrote As Time Goes By. November