GIFT OF THE GOLDEN MOUNTAIN

An engrossing romance featuring the tumultuous life of beautiful young San Francisco heiress May Reade--a continuation of Streshinksy's 1982 potboiler, Hers The Kingdom. As the story opens, 34-year-old May is groping to find her past. Father Porter Reade was a leftist WW II correspondent who died of a coronary after facing down Joseph McCarthy and his thugs; mother Liao Ch'ing-Ling deserted Porter and May during the war to flee back to China. With the Reade millions (from land, oil, and mines, as chronicled in Hers The Kingdom), May becomes a geologist during the roaring 60's, but doesn't do much rock-picking. Ever-dreaming of her unknown mother, she makes a fantastic journey into mainland China in the early 70's to search her out, actually finds Ch'ing-Ling practicing medicine in a remote village, and--after discovering the secret behind her mother's desertion--actually makes it out again. She marries student-activist-turned-State-Department-smoothie Hayes Diehl and prepares to settle down, but she has one last mission to fulfill: Hayes' brother Andy, killed in Vietnam, has left behind a young son. May and Diehl fight their way into South Vietnam during the hysterical final days of the war, and rescue the boy. Good entertainment, full of steaming Asian color--although, at the beginning, the reader needs a scorecard to keep track of the parade of ghosts from Hers The Kingdom.