Family Values

Okay. Yesterday I promised to write something about family values. Berkley Homespun novels were supposed to extol family values. The books had to contain at least one child. They had to be sweet (as opposed to erotic) romances. They had to leave the reader feeling good about American culture and, well, values.

So I wrote a couple of proposals. Y'know which one Berkley chose? The one in which the heroine steals a baby and a bunch of money and runs to the New Mexico Territory to her foster brother, an alcoholic who preaches to a town of ex or current criminals who are always getting drunk and shooting each other. His church is the saloon, and his congregation is about as mixed a bag of exiles, drunkards, runaways and/or weak links as you can find anywhere (except maybe downtown L.A.). Diabolito Lindo, the town, is in Lincoln County, in the Sacramento Mountains, where Billy the Kid did his thing a year or so prior to when the book (SWEET CHARITY) starts.

I don't know about you, but those aren't the types of family values I think of when I think of  family values.