Indiscretions

When a beautiful advertising whiz appears on national television, she doesn't dream that the publicity will bring every skeleton out of her closet. As a child, Susan Taylor is stifled by her ambitious Southern mother and molested by her stepfather, until one night she retaliates with a brass lamp. Believing she has killed him, Susan and her mother flee to Texas, where the young woman marries the rich and too-handsome Carter Tolman. After Carter blatantly cheats on her, Susan takes their baby to New York and renames herself Taylor Sinclair. Taylor rises with lightning speed to the top of a small but powerful ad agency and, for reasons not clear even to her, is appointed to a special Presidential committee on trade. But after her television stint, her stepfather, alive and claiming to be reformed, contacts her with a proposition, her long-lost Aunt Billie calls with some unsettling information and Carter, too, reappears with an agenda of his own. Although Sydney ( Pleasures ) has created a strong female protagonist in Taylor, her farfetched plot will leave readers incredulous. (Jan.)