Trouble in Paradise — Lorena Ann Olmstead

A new family was the last thing honey-blonde Carol Brenner wanted after her parents were killed in an automobile accident. No one, she thought, could ever begin to replace them. but since she was still too young to claim the trust fund her father had willed to her, Carol had little choice but to accept her godfather's offer to come and live with him and his family. Carol had never met the Schoners, and it was with trepidation that she left her New York apartment to make her home in California. The Schoners were a household of eight, and on the surface, life in their rambling white house seemed full of love and happiness as well as luxury. Beneath the superficial calm, however, Carol sensed trouble brewing on several fronts. Fifteen-year-old Sandy Schoner was just headstrong enough to let her adolescent rebelliousness get out of hand. Obese Chad Paterson, Mrs. Schoner's orphaned nephew, was so bitter about the childhood accident that had crippled one of his legs that he treated everyone with resentful hostility. And lovely Sylvia Barrows Schoner seemed to be more occupied with flirting with her brother-in-law Mark than with worrying about her husband, Gerald, a prisoner of war in Vietnam. And then there was Viking-blond David Schoner, whose casual displays of brotherly affection aroused a heartbreakingly unsisterly response in Carol--for how could she compete with the auburn-tressed beauty of Sylvia's sister, Elyse Barrows?