Peachtree Road

As in the bestselling Homeplace , Siddons again depicts the demise of genteel Atlanta and its submergence in the Sunbelt culture while keeping the reader engrossed in a suspenseful tale featuring vividly portrayed characters. If sometimes her prose acquires melodramatic excess, Siddons is generally a gifted raconteur in the style of Pat Conroy, and her imaginative plot twists make this hefty novel an absorbing page-turner. From the sad vantage point of middle age, narrator Shepard Gibbs Bondurant III tells the story of his bewitchingly beautiful but manipulative, destructive cousin Lucy Bondurant Chastain Venable. Abandoned by her father and ignored by her cold, social-climbing mother, Lucy has an insatiable need for love and protection. She commands Shep's devotion and loyalty through her two doomed marriages even as her volatile behavior accelerates into madness. Meanwhile, she has destroyed Shep's relationship with Sarah Cameron, daughter of another socially prominent Atlanta family. Central to the novel is Siddons's portrayal of Atlanta's social elite, who live in the exclusive suburb called Buckland, epitomized by Peachtree Road. Her depiction of the young set, called Pinks and Jells, ``the golden elect of an entire generation,'' is a cameo of social history. She is equally adroit in interpolating civil rights and other germane social issues into the plot. But it is as an accomplished story teller that Siddons makes her mark, pulling out all the emotional stops in a compulsively readable narrative. 50,000 first printing; $55,000 ad/promo; Troll Book Club main selection; author tour. (October)