High Cotton: Love and Death on Wall Street

Readers are likely to find Daley and her companions less charming than she claims in her self-serving story. Divorced, then jilted by a lover, she pinned matrimonial hopes on Philip Hehemeyer, a trader on the New York Cotton Exchange. Her affair with the Southerner started in 1975, and she came to know his friends from home, J. Lucas and others, hard drinkers and dopers whose hijinks she found amusing: turning a fire hose on her; crawling under a waitress's skirt, etc. When Hehemeyer wasn't available, Daley became intimate with J. Lucas, and, losing hope of marrying the man she loved, she determined to have a baby, fathered by J. Lucas. Hehemeyer became engaged to another woman and killed himself before the wedding. There are tidbits about financiers and stock manipulators, but Daley mostly dwells on herself, with frequent references to her beauty and strength. She is now a proud single parent, bringing up her son. (June 22)