RANDOM WINDS

by Belva Plain ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 26, 1980

Not quite up to the pep of Evergreen, but this tale of thwarted life-long love between Dr. Martin Farrell and the ever-lovely Mary Fern is sure to shoot up the best seller charts like a rogue vine. It's a love story composed of diminished sevenths--packed with near-misses and catastrophe. Martin, son of a good, poor country doctor in upstate New York, first meets Mary and her crippled sister Jessie when he is a young med student. There's a twang of Cupid's arrow, and Martin, bucked by the chance to study neurosurgery with a master, proposes. But then (this is the way things will go from now on) he learns that Mary has married English Alex in London, and his father's illness and death seem to doom him to be a plain GP. But, if he'll marry Jessie, his father-in-law will put out for top study in London. So it goes--and both marriages wither: Alex, it seems, is gay; and Jessie, after the birth of daughter Claire, finds out that Mary and Martin have idyll-ed it in France, and runs off with the tot to America, Martin in guilty pursuit. They divorce, and the war happily erases Alex, but now Martin has wed earth-mother Hazel (who'll produce four children). Then darn it if Hazel doesn't find out about Martin and Mary and commit suicide. So Martin hurls himself into work and daughter Claire's problems--she's fallen in love with Ned, Mary's step-child, but won't give up her doctor's career. Will Martin, off to England to see Ned and Mary, at last find True Love? Uh, uh. Mary is married again, to Simon the art dealer. . . . Mulch, but highly potent in the marketplace.

Pub Date: May 26, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION