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PEDIGREE UNKNOWN by Dorothy Lyons

PEDIGREE UNKNOWN

By

Pub Date: Aug. 27th, 1973
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Julia (she prefers to be called Jill) is engaged to Hadley (he hates being Had), and while she crows over her lucky catch and plans the honeymoon, the blueblooded groom is preoccupied by his two hobbies -- fox hunting and the tracing of pedigrees, particularly that of the projected Hadley S. Winslow, IV. When Jill's application for a passport leads to the discovery that she was adopted after her birth to a down-and-out unwed mother, Hadley defects forthwith. Jill isn't really sorry and neither are we, but her subsequent attempts to regain her self-confidence on the turf aboard a no-account unpedigreed horse belabor a self-evident point. And since Jill's frequent statements to the effect that ancestors don't count is matched by a not so subtle snobbism toward the lower orders, we wonder what that handsome hired hand (actually a graduate student in business administration) finds to admire in her. Incidentally, the final scene ("" 'Jill! Jill! My lovely miracle,' he murmured so softly that it might have been only a prayer before a joyous kiss that affirmed their so-nearly lost love. . ."") is the sappiest we've encountered in years.