Whose Little Girl Are You?

Headstrong Jaye Garrett would do anything for her little brother, Patrick, but in the same minute that she hears he's sick with leukemia she discovers that they were both adopted, bought illegally by their emotionally fragile mother, making it impossible for Jaye to save him with a bone marrow match and transplant. ""If he's got family,"" she vows, ""I'll find them,"" and she sets off for Cawdor, Okla., knowing only that Patrick has Asian blood and that they were born there at a clinic run by Dr. Roland Hunsinger. But small towns are tight with their secrets, and Jaye's not exactly subtle in her search. Originally warned off by Turner Gibson, a slick lawyer who's searching for the lost son of a wealthy client, the two begin to make headway on their respective hunts when they join forces to identify the unmarried women who unwittingly sold their children from Hunsinger's clinic. The pair are up against a town run by the doctor's henchmen: his bitter son-in-law and a violent sheriff. As Jaye and Turner travel the country to find the birth mothers, their Cawdor informants are steadily murdered. Campbell's (Hear No Evil) execution of the drama is patchy; she realistically re-creates Jaye's struggle with her attraction to and mistrust of Turner but lets the original mission of saving Patrick fall to the wayside. The predictable plot turns on stock characters (the headstrong blonde, the religious simpleton, the latently homosexual ruthless killer), but the stories of the unwed mothers, now mature women, add depth to Jaye and Turner's search. Despite its flaws, Campbell fans will still find much to enjoy in this suspenseful tale. (Apr.)