Home Song LaVyrle Spencer and Dukes, David

Product Description RomanceLarge Print EditionWith Spencers usual warmth and clear-headedness . . . Like hot chocolate in the dark night of the soul. Kirkus Reviews*A New York Times Bestseller*A Literary Guild Main Selection*A Doubleday Book Club Main SelectionWhen a new student transfers to his school, Tom Gardner, devoted husband, father, and high school principal, needs only to look at him to realize that this is the son he never knew he had the result of a one-night-stand years before. Raised by an adoring and fiercely independent mother, Kent Arens is a fine young man, but his presence represents something deeper to Tom Gardners family. To Toms wife, Kent is the symbol of a wrenching act of betrayal that shes unable to forgive. To daughter Chelsea, he is the boy she's falling in love with until she learns the truth. And to son Robbie, he is a rival both in the classroom and on the football field and the innocent force driving his parents apart.As the Gardners careen towards disaster, they must learn the true meaning of unconditional love. In that lesson, Home Song strikes a universal chord in us all. From Publishers Weekly A seemingly Norman Rockwell-like family is at the center of Spencer's (Family Blessings) latest novel, and, as usual, Spencer reveals the hard truths that lie beneath the bright exterior. On the first day of school, high-school principal Tom Gardner thinks his biggest problem is finding the shipment of textbooks for his wife Claire's English class; but the most difficult ordeal of his life is about to begin. Tom's real troubles start when he meets a new student, Kent Arens, who turns out to be smart, well-mannered, a star athlete-and the illegitimate son Tom never knew he had, conceived during a one-night stand 18 years ago, just before Tom married Claire. Tom swings between fear that Claire will find out about Kent and pride in his newfound son, but when the boy, unaware of his lineage, starts courting Tom's 16-year-old daughter, Chelsea, Tom is forced to reveal his secret. Claire, bitter and angry, asks Tom to move out of their home. Robby, their son, resents his new brother and takes out his anger on Kent on the football field. Chelsea, meanwhile, starts running with the wrong crowd. But while Tom and Claire grow farther apart, the three siblings decide to become friends. Together, they reunite Tom and Claire, restoring family harmony. While the course of events is predictable, the characters are warmly drawn and their dilemmas realistic, and Spencer knows how to tug at readers' hearstrings. Chalk up another likely bestseller, the 11th in 11 years for this consistently commercial author. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selection; film rights to CBS-TV. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. About the Author LaVyrle Spencer is the New York Times bestselling author of Then Came Heaven, Small Town Girl, That Camden Summer, and many other acclaimed novels. From Booklist The Longfellow poem that Spencer uses for the title of her new melodrama urges "my heart [to] stay at home." But high-school principal Tom Gardner almost loses home and family because of a long-ago betrayal. When transfer student Kent Arens enrolls at Tom's suburban St. Paul school, Tom realizes that Kent's mother, Monica, is the college acquaintance he took to bed the night of his bachelor party in a brief rebellion against having to marry his pregnant girlfriend, Claire; Kent is the son the principal didn't know he had. Tom delays telling English teacher Claire and children Robby, a senior, and Chelsea, a junior, this secret, until Kent and Chelsea appear to be attracted to one another. There's a hothouse quality to this confrontation: the only major characters who don't spend their time at the high school are Monica, a 3M engineer, and Tom's wise-old-man father; Kent and Robby are rival candidates for homecoming king and bump shoulders on the football team; and Kent is a stu