Doin' the Box Step

Fireworks erupt when Chelsea Cox returns to Beechwood, an ultra-WASP Philadelphia suburb, with her fiance+a7, Bennett Edwards, a stuffy Princeton grad who also happens to be black. A first novel. 10,000 first printing. $10,000 ad/promo. Tour.

When, after a six-year absence, 36-year-old Chelsea Cox goes back to the WASPish Philadelphia suburb where she grew up learning the box step (shorthand, apparently, for provincial backwardness), her mother isn't thrilled by the fiance she brings along. A Princeton grad and business success, Bennett is black. The hot questions raised during the visit: will sexy Chelsea marry the pompous, prudish Bennett just to prove a point? Will mother and daughter ever express their love? Can Peter, Chelsea's adolescent idol, settle down when women keep coming to him "like mayflies who light on the glassy surface of a lake"? (He's so "disturbingly magnetic . . . undeniably dangerous, and God, did that make him sexy.") Falter-Barns crams her first novel with sketches of AIDS hysteria, alcoholism and hospital life as well as marital strife, suburban Christmas parties and rumor-mongering, but she dwells with more relish on predictable depictions of Peter's sexual prowess and Bennett's ludicrous attempts to fit in. As for Chelsea, by the time she gets down to the work she's meant to do, she has practically vanished under a mountain of cliches. Author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Falter-Barnes disguises her native Chestnut Hill as Beechwood, an ultra-WASP Philadelphia suburb, in this humorous coming-of-age love triangle. Chelsea "Kiki" Cox returns to Beechwood for her first Christmas in six years after trading its conservatism for the bohemian world of the New York art scene. Accompanying the ever-rebellious Kiki is Bennett, her African American Wall Street fiance, who reads Town and Country in his spare time. An unsuspecting mother anxious for a reconciliation with her wayward daughter waits at the train station. Enter Peter MacKenzie, the local, aging, rock-star heartthrob, and the object of Kiki's unrequited teenage love. Love-'em-and-leave-'em Pete is finding life empty until he and Kiki finally make sparks fly in the sanctuary of St. David's Church on New Year's Eve. Kiki's New Year's resolutions will surprise. First novelist Falter-Barnes moves the story along at a bright, witty pace that recalls Nora Ephron. Light, enjoyable reading.
-Denise Sticha, Carnegie Lib. of Pittsburgh
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.