Mourning Glory

Thirty-eight year old divorcee Grace Sorentino is in a precarious position, upwardly mobile in age, downwardly mobile in income. A cosmetician on Palm Beach's fashionable Worth Avenue, she barely makes enough to keep her 16-year old daughter Jackie in their tiny apartment. Still they're scraping by . . . until Grace loses her job. Hanging on by a thread, Grace reluctantly pursues a cynical and bizarre scheme to snare a rich widower. But when she finally comes within a hair's breadth of her goal, she finds herself enmeshed in a self-spun web of deception and danger that threatens to rob her of everything she holds dear. Brilliant and bittersweet, daring, erotic and darkly humorous, Mourning Glory pulls readers into one woman's tangled web. Here is another blockbusting and timely novel about the cost of getting what you want -- when what you really want is priceless.From Publishers WeeklyLubricious (and sometimes ludicrous), this novel gives hope to despairing single females on the verge of 40. There's always a chance to acquire a rich husband if you screen the obits, pick out a grieving widower with a posh address and take after him, saving the sex card, of course, for last. Prolific novelist and screenwriter Adler (The War of the Roses) is a skilled fictioneer; his plot turns are inventive, and his true-to-life dialogue helps identify each character all of whom engage readers' emotions in one way or another. Grace Sorrentino, divorced mother of feisty teenaged daughter Jackie, sells cosmetics at Saks in Palm Beach until she's fired for talking back to a rude, rich customer. Faced with continued downward mobility, she takes her boss's advice, does the research and finally fibs her way into Sam Goodwin's mansion after the funeral of his "perfect" wife, Anne, professing to be a volunteer who's been designated to distribute Anne's extensive wardrobe among appropriate charities. One lie leads to another as Grace invents an upscale past (parentage, college, ex-husband, daughter) to match her envisioned upscale future. Grace can foresee neither the threat posed by Sam's greedy adult children nor that represented by her own daughter, full of curiosity about her mother's secret activities. The sex and money showcased here constitute soft porn: designer label lingo will satisfy upwardly mobile wannabes, and the occasional stirrings of conscience among the principal characters make everybody feel good. This is romance doctored with a good dose of suspense; the titillating premise should attract browsers, especially when the mass market edition appears. National advertising; 3-city author tour. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.From BooklistDesperate times call for desperate measures. Out of a job, out of money, and out of patience with her out-of-control teenage daughter, Grace takes some unusual advice from an unlikely source and does something out of character to stop her life from falling completely apart. Deciding that a loveless marriage to a wealthy man is the solution, the thirtysomething divorcee makes a calculated attempt to snare a rich widower. In tony Palm Beach, such creatures are not uncommon, and finding a likely suspect is as easy as perusing the obituaries, then cruising the funeral parlors. Quick as you can say "my deepest condolences," Grace meets Sam and insinuates herself into his life, his bed, and ultimately his heart. Although everything goes beyond her wildest expectations, nothing goes according to plan as truth and honesty are sacrificed to greed and deception. Viewing the dating game from an offbeat perspective, Adler paints a credible portrait of a grieving widower and a ruthless caricature of a predatory woman. Carol HaggasCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved