Keeping Secrets

In an autobiography that unfolds from the viewpoint of the adult child of an alcoholic, Somers reveals the dark underpinning of her acting career. She shows us the gradual disintegration of her family due to their keeping the guilty secret of the father's affliction. The facade of normal family life was initially supported by Somers's stoic, churchgoing mother, but it also became the burden of the children. Though Somers's childhood in San Francisco was made harrowing by the rampages of her alcohol-maddened father, there were interstices of family togetherness. The author had a stormy adolescence, including a short-lived first marriage that produced a son; her siblings were affected by their own alcoholism until one, then another, joined Alcoholics Anonymous. Today, writes Somers, ""Everyone in my family is now recovering.'' Her courageous outspokenness will support other children of alcoholics. Photos. (January 25)