Coming Back Up

""By age thirty-eight, I had reached my stride and was lucky enough to know it,'' proclaims the narrator in this novel's opening sentence. She is Lonnie Mathias, an artist in Berkeley who is satisfied with her life as a single woman, her career and her decision not to have children. But Lonnie's luck runs out one evening when she is raped by three men who enter her apartment, apparently looking for drugs. Lonnie is slowing recovering from her physical and psychological bruises when she realizes she is pregnant. She chooses to have the baby, and then struggles with another decision: whether to raise the child herself or put the baby up for adoption. In her modest yet polished first novel, Lipsett has created a strong heroine, as well as a credible cast of family members and friends who help Lonnie realize that she is not, as she feared, forever ``ruined for love.'' November 21