Surrogate motherhood takes it on the chin in this ostensibly comic second effort as Litman (The Ladies Farm) returns to the Texas hill country and the bed-and-breakfast featured in her debut, this time skewering a generation that myopically favors the bottom line over the big picture. When Darlene Kindalia consents to be a surrogate mother for Dr. Ryan Plummer and his wife, she assumes it will be an easy way to earn extra money, certainly easier than waiting tables. Soon the truth begins to emerge: one of the children Ryan already has is very sick and he's hoping the baby Darlene carries will somehow be the key to saving his son's life. The single mother of a four-year-old with beauty-queen aspirations, Darlene retreats to the Ladies Farm, where her mother, Rita, runs the hair salon. There, Darlene's situation has a galvanizing effect on one of Rita's colleagues, Kat, who gave up a child long ago. Litman offers several different definitions of good motherhood, at the same time highlighting the ways in which modern mores have complicated the birds and the bees. Despite the Southern-fried humorous overtones, the author deserves kudos for bringing some thematic gravitas to the current spate of Chick Lite, raising heavy questions about surrogacy in a capitalist society. But the book's cartoonish pink cover promises a frothy, lighthearted tale, and readers who pick this up will be surprised by the paucity of laughs as well as by the number of pages devoted to ethics and illness. Major ad/promo. (June)
