LATE BLOOMER: Profiles of Women Who Found Their True Callings

A twist on the author's earlier Millionairess: Self-Made Women of America: 15 women from all parts of the country tell what it's like to change course for success after you've completed or scrubbed one career (in most cases here, motherhood). Rich-McCoy is under the impression that these women's stories, along with glowing testimonials from hubby, colleague, neighbor, or other confidant, will provide the vacillating reader with ""practical methodology and role models."" But the narrative is so self-consciously smarmy that even those with unusual achievements come across as boring. Rich-McCoy makes matters worse by summarizing the achievements of each woman at the end of the chapter, as if we couldn't pick up the salient points ourselves. Among the heroines are two sisters, one an unmarried advertising executive who chucked it all for medical school at age 37 (and now heads a section of National Institutes of Health); the other a former Girl Scout leader and mother of six who became a biologist-researcher at the University of Cincinnati. A number of the women seem to have gotten their start through spiraling involvement in volunteer groups, particularly those with political undertones. Some husbands were secure enough to encourage their wives' mid-life careers; others fell apart when they were no longer the center of attention, and divorce was usually the result. But if we are to learn anything from these women, it must be that they were singleminded in pursuing their aims, undaunted by the years of preparation their late-chosen careers might require, and deserving of a better fate than such trivialization.