After the wedding of Diana Goode and Andrew Douglas, Diana teases that they will make a baby on their honeymoon.  But long afterward, she is still not pregnant.  As Diana and Andrew wait out each month only to be bitterly disappointed, they are forced to question just how much they are willing to go through to have a baby.  

Charlie Winwood dreams of a house filled with children.  His bride, party-girl actress Barbie Mason, has other ideas.  When he discovers he is sterile, Charlie has to rethink his deepest values — and his marriage to a woman who shares none of his dreams.

After ten years of living together, Pilar Graham, a prominent Santa Barbara attorney, marries Judge Brad Coleman, who is nineteen years her senior and father of two grown children.  They are happy with their comfortable life together, à deux, until Pilar begins to wonder if she will someday regret not having a baby with Brad.  Are they crazy to begin now — with Brad about to become a grandfather and Pilar with a busy career, and in her early forties, possibly putting herself at risk?

Through the lives of these couples, Danielle Steel shows us the mixed blessingswe face as we build our families and live our modern lives.  She touches us with the triumphant people who prevail, their victories, their defeats, their tragedies and joys, their compromises, their lives.

The prolific Steel ( No Greater Love ) turns her attentions to a contemporary topic: infertility, and the desperate measures that couples resort to in the hope of biological parenthood. Steel's approach, however, is often maudlin and simplistic. Here, three California couples are married on the same day; none of the women proves able to conceive. The couples never meet, but Steel tracks their common fate with a vigor that rivals her characters' quest for children. Various partners consult fertility experts, and ultimately every conceivable aspect of reproductive medicine, including surrogate motherhood, is given its due. Steel explores the emotional strain on the couples: Diana and Andy, who previously led charmed lives; bubbleheaded would-be starlet Barbi and unexciting but wholesome Charlie; and 42-year-old Pilar, a successful attorney, and 61-year-old Bradford, a judge and widower who has two children. Marriages founder, but conventionally good characters find their way to happy endings. While Steel sets up potentially complex family relationships, she forgoes developing them; just as it wreaks havoc on the characters, the single-minded pursuit of babies damages the narrative. Major ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selection. (Dec. )

Categories:

• Romance
  • Contemporary