Lynne Cheney to Pen New Romance Novel

Plenty of Sex - Same-Sex and Otherwise - Is Promised

Penguin Group USA plans to reissue the 1981 romance novel "Sisters" written by Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney. The novel is about feminism in the old west. Publishers Weekly reported that the book features "a mix of standard and unusual pulp romance fare: lots of turgid prose, heaving bosoms, female characters who are proto-feminists and practice safe sex with multiple partners - and a juicy lesbian subplot." -- News Item

Here is an excerpt from a proposal for Mrs. Cheney's next fiction project. Her literary agent is circulating it among New York publishing houses:

"The Passions of the Bunker" is a romance novel set in the future when the United States is at war abroad on several fronts, fighting evil forces that seek to destroy our country or enslave the heroic American people. The central character in "The Passions of the Bunker" is Candice Livingston, a 43-year-old graduate of Smith College who was second in her law school class at Harvard. In her mid-twenties, Candice, whose friends call her Candy, gave up a high-profile, rapidly ascending career as an investment banker on Wall Street to marry, Lester Higgins, a charismatic, tall, muscular and extremely handsome career bureaucrat in Washington who still has all his hair.

Candy, whose father sexually abused her as a child, was irresistibly drawn to Lester, who is 20 years older, because Lester reminded her of her father and because he inherited $200 million when his parents were killed in a mysterious plane crash. Lester, for his part, was irresistibly drawn to Candy because he wanted a young trophy wife who had graduated from an Ivy League college, had an advanced degree and whose breasts were not too small and not too large, but just right. As a trust fund bureaucrat, Lester has worked at a series of high-level, very important government jobs, all the while maintaining a lifestyle of the rich and famous. Now comes Lester's biggest government job: leading the 3,000-person Shadow Government that has been set up in an abandoned potash mine near Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Candy and Lester are far from happy. Lester has had a series of affairs with co-workers and congressional staff members. Many of the affairs have boosted his career, but strained the marriage. For her part, Candy has had an on-again, off-again affair with a bisexual florist in Arlington, who shares Candy's passion for chrysanthemums. Candy and Lester have a daughter, Jesse, who is 18 and recently revealed she is a lesbian. Jesse's parents wrung this confession from her after they discovered that for more than a year Jesse had been climbing out her bedroom window at night and meeting older women in a bar in Chevy Chase where lesbian poets hang out. It's not clear, but the florist might have had a role in arranging the assignations. Candy hopes she can keep this from Lester, who is a member of the National Rifle Association and a fervent supporter of the Second Amendment. Candy vows that she will use love and prayer to turn Jesse away from homosexuality, which is against God's law.

As the novel opens, Lester, Candy and Jesse have just arrived at the secret Shadow Government bunker in New Mexico and are settling into their new mercury-vapor lit life. Candy immediately finds herself irresistibly drawn to Lars Angstrom, the tall, handsome and very muscular former Delta Force commando who is Candy and Jesse's personal bodyguard. Lester is soon called back to Washington for a lengthy visit. As Candy realizes she is in love with Lars and ponders how to get him to fall in love with an older woman, she discovers that Jesse and Lars are each having an affair with Consuela, the young Mexican woman who is the family's cook and is hiding from the Border Patrol.

One day, as all four of them are on a carefree picnic in a distant recess of the old potash mine, they stumble upon a secret opening that leads from the mine into an unexplored chamber of Carlsbad Caverns National Park, where the superintendent is a classmate of Candy's from Harvard law. As they creep into the vast cavern, their narrow flashlight beams stabbing the darkness, one by one they begin to...

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