cover image Blood Sisters

Blood Sisters

Judith Henry Wall. Viking Books, $22 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-670-84114-1

In this flawed effort by the author of Love and Duty, four friends vow to be blood sisters always. Helen, Bonnie and Jen revolve like dim stars around sparkling Libby, their leader.The center of attention everywhere except home, Libby feels excluded by her parents' absorption in her sick brother, so she adopts a set of friends who give her the obsessive devotion she seems to require. She directs the other girls' lives until the early '60s finds them moving in directions away from her. Though Libby's actions pervade the tale, the narrative unfolds through the consciousness of Helen, once Libby's closest friend. Helen's model existence with her physician husband, and Bonnie's and Jen's lives are abruptly disrupted one day in 1966 when Libby disappears, seemingly into the thin air of the Colorado mountains. Official inquiries turn up nothing, so the friends-of course-begin a search of their own. What they uncover changes their lives and their vision of Libby forever. Unfortunately, along with clichits (Libby is described as the snow princess, and her lips are a slash of red against pale skin) and a plot as predictable as that of a dime-store romance, this minimally involving story suffers from a surfeit of stereotypes; only two minor characters show any development or self-knowledge. (Nov.)