Heartbeat
A Novel
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Bill Thigpen, writer producer of the No.1 daytime TV drama was so busy watching his career soar that he never noticed his marriage collapse. Now, nine years later, living alone in Hollywood, even without his wife and kids, his life and success are still reasonably sweet. Top-of-the-chart ratings, good-natured casual affairs, and special vacations with his two young sons. His life is in perfect balance, he thinks.
Adrian Townshed thought she had everything: a job she liked as a TV production assistant and a handsome husband who was a rising star in his own field. In as enviable life they'd worked hard for—the American Dream. Until she got pregnant. Suddenly all she had was chaos. And Steven's ultimatum. Him or the baby. The question was: did he mean it? He did.
Bill Thigpen and Adrian Townshed collided in a supermarket. And the very sight of her suddenly makes him want more in his life.... a woman he really loves, a real family again. But does he need the heartache of another man's baby, another wife? Neither does. But they couldn't help it.
Danielle Steel touches the Heartbeat of two wonderful people as their friendship deepens into love, as they meet the obstacles that life presents with humor, humanity, and courage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An audacious--and ill-conceived--departure from her usual glitzy settings, Steel's ( Daddy ; Star ) 25th novel focuses on the Vietnam War, though it merely skims the surface of that turbulent era. In an attempt at seriousness, Steel awkwardly shoehorns in a veritable almanac of historical facts and such painful milestones as the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. Her heroine, feisty Savannah native Paxton Andrews, disdains the role of a Southern belle and flees to UC Berkeley, where she pursues a journalism major and instantly falls in love with law student Peter Wilson, son of a newspaper tycoon. When Peter is killed in Vietnam, grief-stricken Paxton wangles a ticket to the front as a journalist, where, with an initial boost from a tough, fatherly AP correspondent, she knocks out an acclaimed column for seven years. Steel's undemanding style is too often marred by gushing, breathless prose that trivializes serious events. While the mega-selling author isn't at the top of her form, her fans will enjoy the emotional firestorm as Paxton reels from a series of tragic blows, some concerning her hotheaded lover, Sergeant Tony Campobello, a POW. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selections.