cover image Blood Lines

Blood Lines

Liz Ryan. St. Martin's Press, $24.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-312-13933-9

A rebellious daughter sows her wild oats before coming home to feed them to her horses in this heavy-handed debut from Ryan, a journalist with Dublin's Evening Herald. The novel, which spans from 1968 to the 1990s, opens in Ireland as Kerry Laraghy, the spoiled red-haired heiress of Ashamber, her family's 900-acre horse farm, is celebrating her 18th birthday. She had promised her father, Eamonn, that she would remain at Ashamber and learn to train thoroughbreds. Yearning to experience the '60s, however, Kerry rebels and heads to Paris where her twin brother, a brooding fashion designer, lives. But shortly after arriving in the City of Lights, she meets and very quickly marries Darragh de Bruin, an Irish street musician (which causes her outraged da to disinherit her). They move to Senegal to do volunteer work, but the marriage collapses. Pregnant and miserable, Kerry goes to New York where, two months after the birth of her son, Killian, Kerry learns that her parents have been attacked by the Irish Republican Army. She rushes back to Ireland, hoping to see them alive-but arrives too late. Although her father has left her penniless, his will stipulates that she can inherit the house, the estate and a valuable horse, Blue Moon, on the condition that the farm shows an annual profit. Kerry accepts her father's challenge and receives help from a wealthy, married admirer and her dead father's mistress. Can Kerry make the family farm successful, find true love and become a better mother? In answering these and other questions, this mediocre soap opera offers a melodramatic plot, a plodding pace and few surprises. (Jan.)