I GATHERED THE BRIGHT DAYS

Bearing up under ore of the longer subtitles -- ""A Courageous Woman's Story of her Family, Struggles and Triumphs"" -- this begins and ends with the death of Lee Lane's chest surgeon-husband Zeph after 27 years of ""hectic"" (a recurrent word) home and hospital activity. She had been a nurse at Columbia-Presbyterian when she met him and married him; he went on as a resident in his special, experimental field long after the war and after the two children, all they wished to have, followed. But more kept coming (when asked if they were Catholics Zeph answered, ""No, just passionate Protestants"") up through the sixth and seventh, a mongoloid, and a malformed eighth infant which soon died. Lee went back to nursing in spite of her houseful; there are troubles with a suicidal daughter, a son wounded in Vietnam, and all in all you'll get the lively-as-a-cricket-if-not-always-merry-as-a-grig effect. Zeph always said ""Ma, you'll manage""; she did and she probably will now, finding a home-styled readership on her own extroverted terms.