Accident

Lately, Steel's romantic domestic dramas have contained less froth and more hard-working detergent, dealing as they have with such sobersides stuff as kidnapping (Vanished, 1993) or infertility (Mired Blessings, 1992) - and now the tragedy of highway deaths and the maiming of young teens. Here, a mother of two copes with a months-long hospital vigil, a looming divorce, and crazy relatives who shared her loathsome childhood. And of course the ideal man will shimmer into being. Page Clarke is happy with her seven-year-old son Andy, lovely teenager Allyson, and handsome husband Brad, who so often (alas) is away on business trips. Then one fateful night, Allyson and friend Chloe plot to drive out to dinner with two nice guys...and Page gets that terrible call in the small hours. At the hospital, Page and Chloe's divorced father, Trygve Thorensen, receive the news: Chloe, her ballet days over, will survive; one boy is dead and another unhurt; but Allyson has a severe brain injury. During the months of Allyson's operations and her coma, Brad-who's been having a serious affair with a much younger woman-angrily confesses all; Page's spacey mother and bulimic sister arrive for a visit, kindling memories of childhood incest; and poor Andy, crushed by hostilities at home, breaks his arm. But standing by is Trygve, offering strength all along on Page's rugged road, and at the last the culprit in the accident will be run to ground. With Steel's smoothie, TV-matinee dialogue, which flows like an interstate, and with the ever-popular medical/hospital setting: another Steel sure-thing. (Kirkus Reviews)