Northern Exposure: A Novel by

This unpredictable and at times deeply moving first novel begins as Dianna, shaken after her second divorce, resolves to leave San Francisco and drive to Boston to contact her best friend Emily whom she has not seen in 10 years. In Boston she will also see her first husband Alan whom she believes will fall in love with her again. Dianna acknowledges that this passionate scenario is unlikely, since Emily and Alan have been married to each other for almost a decade. In Chicago Dianna picks up Liz, a teenage hitchhiker, and the two women set off on a lengthy voyage of self-discovery, exchanging confidences--and lies. Liz is a quirky, shrewd survivor who quickly sums up Dianna as the insecure and unsatisfied dreamer that she is. Dianna, never able to have chldren, is ambivalent about the mother image she feels she is projecting. McCormick's plotting is at times irrational and quixotic, yet her heroines' confrontations with friends, parents, husbands and lovers and the peeling away of their layers of self-deception are handled deftly and with absorbing detail. (Jan.)