Because I Wanted You

It's a long trek from a mountain cabin in Kentucky to decaf-skim mochaccinos with cinnamon on Fifth Avenue, but Ruby Maxwell--nee Ruby Blossom Bottom--has successfully navigated it, and then some. Having arrived in Manhattan at age 17 with merely the dream of a better life, at 24 she's ""America's favorite sister."" The successful down-home host of her own syndicated TV talk show, Ruby grows disenchanted with her career as she contemplates marriage to her wealthy boyfriend while coping with the unwelcome intrusion of ghosts from the past: her seedy parents--a hard-drinking father and enabling mother--and a child named Lucie, supposedly Ruby's own ""sister."" And she's haunted by the memory of her first love, a man who was her teacher and who encouraged her to break out of the Appalachian world in which she was reared. The pseudonymous Garrett's second novel (in her other career, she's the celebrity journalist Kelli Pryor) does manage to deliver some surprises, though the writing is occasionally both too sober and too treacly: Ruby carries around a fortune-cookie slip that reads ""Love can do no wrong that can't be made right""; her hopeful belief in the aphorism may make readers question her intelligence. But fans of sweet and simple romances and those who long for all-is-forgiven endings will find what they want here. Literary Guild and Doubleday alternates. (July) FYI: Garrett's first novel, Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground, has been optioned by Turner Pictures.