True Colors

Despite a slow start, inventory-like descriptions and some unbelievable plot pivots in its first half, Mortman's fourth novel (after The Wild Rose) winds up spinning an intricate, compelling and romantic story of undone loyalties and unearthed secrets. Isabelle de Luna and Nina Duran are raised as sisters by a kind, struggling couple, who own a hotel and an art gallery in Santa Fe. The Durans took in Nina as a foundling and, a decade later, in 1963, opened their arms to Isabelle, seven, who had just witnessed the rape-murder of her mother, a wealthy Spanish artist, and the arrest of her father for the crime. Years later, Nina discovers the true circumstances of her adoption by the Durans and, in a credulity-stretching development, leaves Santa Fe for New York, creating a new identity and severing all past ties. Meanwhile, Isabelle has assuaged her grief over her parents' deaths through her art, evolving into the ``most sensual, accessible artist since Georgia O'Keeffe.'' Nina and Isabelle cross paths repeatedly, if not amiably, with Nina's ascendance as a society reporter allowing her to perform hatchet jobs on her sister, whose artistic success she envies. The entanglements of both women with assorted men propel the story to its dizzying, satisfying conclusion, in which Nina comes to terms with her origins and Isabelle recovers the memory of her mother's true killer, so that each can be free to love. Major ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection; available in large-print edition from Random House ($23, ISBN 0-679-76034-2); author tour.