Title: Tunnel of love
Description: Tunnel of Love is the wrenching and hilarious story of Linda Reismann - newly pregnant and widowed - and her teenage stepdaughter, Robin, who are struggling to become a family against tremendous odds. Robin is terminally sullen; her mother abandoned her when she was a baby, and her father died only six weeks after marrying Linda (a.k.a. "the kiss of death").

Shortly after they move from Newark to Los Angeles in pursuit of the American dream, Linda starts to resemble the Goodyear Blimp, which makes it hard to hold on to her job as a dance instructor. And it's hard to make friends if, like Robin, you believe "the whole world, and everybody in it, sucks." Only the birth of baby Phoebe gives them a jolt of shared happiness and optimism

. But soon their makeshift family is threatened by the manipulations of Cynthia Sterling, a high-powered soap-opera producer with a generous purse and an ominous secret agenda. And Linda's handsome new lover, Nathan Diaz, harbors his own troubling secret.

As L.A. endures the failing economy and growing racial unrest, making Robin's dim assessment of the world seem scarily apt, Bill Clinton appears on the political horizon, promising change. Heroic change is what Linda and Robin must both effect in order to repair their broken lives.
Subjects: Fiction, Pregnant women, Stepfamilies, Widows, Domestic fiction, New York Times reviewed, California, fiction, Los angeles (calif.), fiction
Places: Los Angeles (Calif.)