cover image Choices: How a Devoted Wife and Mother Met Martina Navratilova and Opted for the Lesbian Life

Choices: How a Devoted Wife and Mother Met Martina Navratilova and Opted for the Lesbian Life

Judy Hill Nelson. Carol Publishing Corporation, $21.95 (16pp) ISBN 978-1-55972-328-2

At age 50, having been ignominiously dumped-as the author sees it-by two lovers, tennis star Martina Navratilova and, later, novelist Rita Mae Brown, Nelson tells us here she is learning how to make her own living, experimenting with such careers as writer, TV commentator and tour-group leader. If this bleating memoir is any indication, writing is one field she ought to scrap. Although she testified against Navratilova in her 1993 book, Love Match (coauthored with Susan Faulkner), Nelson again rehashes their seven years together, which culminated in Nelson's lawsuit for a financial settlement (settled out of court for an undisclosed sum). She also burdens readers with recollections of her Texas childhood, her supportive parents, her divorced husband and their sons, Eddie, now a law student, and Bales, an undergraduate. She also tells of two years with novelist Brown, who was herself a one-time lover of Navratilova, and of her current lover. Whether in love or in business, victimization seems to be the theme of Nelson's life, at least as related here. Photos not seen by PW. (June)