FULL CIRCLE

by Danielle Steel ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 8, 1984

Poor Tana Roberts--she's a nice kid who gets belted early on with trauma. Tana's mother Jean, you see, widowed at the start of WW II, has been involved for years in a degrading Back Street affair with Arthur Durning, a ""dynamo in business"" who won't marry Jean even when he's rid of his wife; after all, his horrid children, Ann and Bill, might object. And it's savage Bill who viciously rapes Tans at a high-school-graduation party. Bad enough? Wait--it's even worse. Though Tans is battered and bleeding when she tells all to Mom, Jean just won't believe it! So a soul-scarred Tana goes to Green Hill College in the segregated South, where her token black roommate, Sharon Blake (daughter of a Pulitzer Prize winner), becomes her best friend. The two girls are shunned by the student body. Moreover, Tana will have nothing to do with romance--even if she likes rakish, ever-so-casual Harrison Window IV (""Harry"") when she meets him at her Manhattan ""coming-out dance"": Harry, too, has a dismal family history, a mother driven to suicide by Harrison III's international infidelities. And, while there's a platonic Harry/Tana relationship, she concentrates on civil-rights activism (after the racist murder of Sharon's brother), is expelled from school, and yearns for a career instead of husband-hunting. So: will Tana ever overcome her Grievous Wound and discover the joys of sex? Well, when Harry returns partially paralyzed from Vietnam, Tans pulls him through to life--and love, with another woman for a wife. Then, in the hospital, Tans meets Harrison III--and he's gorgeous! But, though Tana's in love with Harry III, he'll keep his hands off. . . out of deference to Harry IV. (A father/son reconciliation ensues.) Eventually, however, in California law school, Tana will finally succumb--to a future terrorist; later she'll take three more lovers. And at last there's that perfect man, a judgeship, and a baby. . . just under the wire at 40. Scrub-team soap, with billboard characters, but sure to travel well under the Steel banner.

Pub Date: June 8, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION