Papa's Cord

Willis's debut novel investigates the life, loves, moral dilemmas and family ties of plucky Jewish New Yorker Josie Davidovitch. Josie grows from the saucy '60s daughter of an elegant mother and domineering Manhattan gynecologist father into an ambitious wife and careerwoman. The young heroine enjoys, and suffers, an uncommonly candid relationship with her father, who's beloved by his patients but is a bully at home, and who bombards his teenaged daughter with clinical information about sex. He decides that Josie should have her first pelvic exam at 13, a traumatizing experience that is partly responsible for Josie's need to keep many sexual secrets: losing her virginity in her parents' bed, sex in her father's office, an abortion. Vague prose outlines Josie's high school and college days, fast-forwarding to her romance and engagement to the charming athlete Gus Housman, who becomes a paraplegic after a swimming accident. Josie marries him despite her parents' advice and life takes an unexpected turn: their romantic, against-all-odds story is published as a his 'n' hers memoir, and a Hollywood producer commissions a screenplay. With Gus now a successful media executive, and their thwarted hopes for a family about to be fulfilled, Josie must face her father's sudden illness and deep depression, which propels her to greater understanding of her family's emotional heritage. Willis deftly portrays the post-Doris Day/pre-Gloria Steinem era and humanizes the Jewish princess clich and its formative father figure. Despite the author's valiant effort to dissect a complex father-daughter relationship, stereotype triumphs over depth as the heroine acquires material wealth, worldly success and guilt. Tender passages (like Gus's fond childhood memories of Brooklyn or Josie peeking in at her father at work) are undermined by the heroine's impertinent Hollywood wheeling and dealing, her hopes that she and Gus will become the next ""Diana and Lionel Trilling,"" and her sneaky secret about her child's paternity. Readers should enjoy the lucid descriptions of New York life, and will most likely find that adolescent Josie is a more convincing take-charge protagonist than her striving adult counterpart. Agent, Jonathon Lazear. (Sept.)