Rainy Days and Sundays

A premise as volatile as tomorrow's headlines sparks the opening of this timely suspense novel, set in the year 2002, when Jerry Falwell is a Nobel nominee, a cure for AIDS is found and terrorist attacks cause the right-wing U.S. president to shut down abortion clinics nationwide. Debut novelist Robertson sets his ambitious near-future dystopia primarily on the Carolinas coast, and imagines the paradoxes of a sexually free, post-AIDS climate coinciding with a return to the pre-Roe v. Wade days of dangerous back-alley abortions. Against this backdrop evolve the dramatic trials of hapless Buchanan Forbes, a pharmaceutical marketing rep whose life is falling apart. When his company's illegal trade in a Viagra-like pill is discovered by the feds, Buck is forced to resign, whereupon his cold, unhappy wife leaves him, taking their four sons with her. Buck is determined to be reunited with his boys, but the IRS is hot on his trail, and he also feels the need to sow some wild oats. One of his female companions winds up the latest victim in a rash of fatal botched abortions, plunging Buck into yet another kind of trouble. He's a millennial Renaissance man, however, who paints, plays guitar, is irresistible to women and bounces back from the career-wrecking scandal almost immediately to nab a high-profile writing job. The women in this story have no such luck: most suffer bloody deaths, or contract a disease, like Buck's wife, Alma, diagnosed with cancer. Somewhere in these 400 pages, the intense political meanings and timely social message get lost in Buck's strangely chaotic and increasingly untethered tale. What starts out so promisingly with such a sizzling, camera-ready premise--abortions are out and sex is back in-- is sidetracked by an earnest, clueless protagonist who obstructs rather than propels the plot. Film rights optioned by Alan Brown. (May) FYI: Robertson was the recipient of the publisher's inaugural Golden Eye Literary Prize, honoring Carson McCullers.