BECAUSE I WANTED YOU

Garrett's second novel (Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground, 1988) is more polished and less flaky than her debut, though still basically predictable, fun-loving fluff. Beautiful, high-spirited Ruby Maxwell has reached the top. She's now the host of her own top-rated talk show and a nationally known and beloved TV personality; her boyfriend, Paul Carrigan, is a kind and wealthy socialite who's inherited his grandmother's Fifth Avenue penthouse and wants to marry her; and she might agree might agree to take him up on it, if only she can come to terms with her troubled past. Back in Kentucky's Appalachian country, Ruby was the only girl in a sprawling, dirt-poor, uneducated family. When at 18 she fell in love with her young and dashing high-school teacher, she felt, for the first time ever, truly special and valued for her intellect; when she became pregnant with his child, however, her parents laid down the law, and her father, in a routine drunken stupor, actually tried to shoot the father of her infant daughter. A desperate, love-sick Ruby did the only thing she could: Along with an equally caged-in Kentucky cousin, she escaped to New York with her earnings from the local burger joint, leaving her daughter behind in the care of her mother. It takes a slimy Village Voice reporter out to make a buck to reintroduce Ruby—once she's made it big in the Big Apple—to her mother, father, and daughter, now living in an East Village squatters' community, having lost their Kentucky home. Ruby is afraid to tell Paul about her family, but more afraid to marry a man she doesn't love. But before you can say ``Cinderella story,'' she's worked everything out in prime-time style. Garrett seems to like the poor-mountain-boy/girl-made-good theme. So, apparently, do her fans. Others might find it thin and unsurprising stuff. (Literary Guild alternate selection)