God's Country Club

Storey (The Lord's Motel) and her heroine Colleen Sweeney return in this lighthearted, though earnest, tale of modern love with its accompanying doubts, societal obligations and challenges to make peace with a checkered past. Houston librarian Colleen, originally from Boston, embarks on a library outreach program to the homeless in an effort to salvage her downsized job. At the same time, she moves in with Dr. Gabriel Benedict, a levelheaded ER medic still licking his wounds from a recent divorce. After a year of dating, Colleen feels drawn to Gabriel but wrestles with many typical emotional ""issues"": the effects of her own broken home and a childhood in the projects of Boston where her semi-homeless father still lives; her craving for intimacy; and her daunting armory of self-defense mechanisms. With its sprightly, sometimes wildly humorous repartee, the novel deftly details Colleen's relationships with Gabriel, her shopping-maniac friend Gigi and with Gabriel's too-Texan-for-words parents, Peaches and King. However, Colleen's nagging problems drag the rather lightweight story down, adding little of redemptive or original value. (Sept.)