cover image Homecoming

Homecoming

Barbara Bickmore. Zebra, $18.95 (482pp) ISBN 978-0-8217-4923-4

Spanning 30 years, Bickmore's (The Back of Beyond) potboiling latest explores a woman's struggle to balance home and career in the aftermath of WWII. In 1948, newspaper heiress Sydney Hamilton weds fledgling actor Jordan Eliot, despite their class differences and opposition from Sydney's father, who disowns her. Jordan's career soars, and the newlyweds move from New York City to Hollywood, where Sydney gradually tires of a homemaker's life. Eager to forge her own identity, she reluctantly divorces Jordan, returns to New York and forces her father to give her a job on the family paper. Eventually, Sydney becomes a successful publisher whose counsel is sought by presidents. Yet even as her fame expands, her relationship with her second husband deteriorates. Overwrought characters (including one who grins and feels ``himself growing erect and hard. Very hard'' as he contemplates killing a woman) and contrived plotting undermine this tale. Bickmore's soap-operatic prose (``Adam, together we're going to have a marvelous time, be important and powerful and have each other to talk everything over with. And we're going to continue having the greatest sex in the world,'' says Sydney to her second husband on their wedding night) doesn't help either. (May)