Wings of Destiny

""Emotions rushed through the room, battering the walls like a tropical hurricane. Metaphysical questions bombarded each other as Yuala read his thoughts, and Rachel read those of her mother."" Readers unfamiliar with Lanigan's (Romancing the Stone) flamboyant prose may mistake this overly melodramatic--at times truly mawkish--multigenerational historical romance for a bald-faced lampoon of the genre. But such is not the case, and Lanigan's young protagonist is nothing if not earnest in her quest for social justice and psychic well-being. As the story begins on April 15, 1906, three days before the catastrophic earthquake in San Francisco, heroine Barbara Kendrick is a fearless young journalist on the brink of exposing the corruption of city officials. Then her mentor, 91-year-old city founder Jefferson Duke, presents her with his diaries and his mother Rachel's writings, and the meandering epic slips back to 1774. Rachel--the fair-skinned daughter of Yuala, a Jamaican-born African voodoo priestess, and Henry Duke, a wealthy white man--is herself destined to love a white Charleston planter; their son, Jefferson, makes his fortune in a white man's world. Meanwhile, a Chinese clan led by malevolent Nan-Yung pursues the other descendants of Henry Duke, whose brother Andrew mired Nan-Yung's grandfather in the opium trade. The two families converge on San Francisco, and as the earthquake rocks the city, centuries-old accounts are settled, and Barbara discovers her true place in the Duke family history. Apparitions, telepathy, clairvoyance and portentous dreams notwithstanding, Lanigan's research is sound, and the climactic descriptions of the historic earthquake ring true. The fulsome prose becomes less distracting as the narrative unfolds, but this is nonetheless an unashamed foray into romantic terrain. 50,000 first printing; major ad/ promo; 5-city author tour. (Oct.) FYI: Released under the heading of Visionary Fiction/Inspiration from a leading publisher of paperback titles on human relations, psychology and self-help, this volume is HCI's first hardcover publication.