KEEPING SECRETS

by Sarah Shankman ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1988

The Unlocking of Miss Emma Rochelle Fine"" could be the subtitle of Shankman's second novel (her first was a psychotic-killer thriller called Impersonal, Attractions, 1985). When the story opens, Emma is a woman with hang-ups. Her husband, Jesse Tree, a sexy black artist, tries to rape her when he suspects she's involved with another man. It's not the infidelity he minds--after all, he has an extracurricular lady love of his own--but Emma's inability to open up. You're ""a goddammed mystery,"" he tells her. To which she replies: ""I'll be gone after coffee tomorrow morning""--presumably, she can't resist one last cup of fresh-ground French dark roast. She runs back home to West Cypress, Louisiana, and her ineffectual father, Jake, and stepmother, Rosalie, though she can't quite open up about the fact that she's married a black man. (Emma's white, half Southern Baptist cracker, half New York Jew.) In Dixie, she learns that Jake isn't her real father, and thus goes searching for her roots in a small Georgia town. But a cozy chat with an old beau makes her realize that she can't reclaim what's lost, that her step-mom and dad love her, and that she's at last free to divorce Jesse--to go to cooking school in Italy, and to be Emma Fine. Slick, easy-reading fare--crowded with hot sex, hysteria, and non-surprises that would have seemed less banal had they been kept secret.

Pub Date: July 1, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION