Beyond Eden by Catherine Coulter is the story of a gentle, vulnerable woman who eventually learns to stand up for herself. It takes a long time.

Lindsay Foxe was born into a family of rich, horrible villains. Tall and gawky, with a large mouth and big hair, she eventually finds her place in the world, but not before her self-esteem is shredded by her despicable father, her venomous sister, her weak mother, her domineering grandmother, and her pervert brother-in-law. Not even the servants are nice to her.

We first meet Lindsay as a naïve teenager, and the first half of this book is devoted to her tale of abuse and tragedy until, as a young woman, she is discovered by a modeling agent. Soon she is a well-known pro, but she is still a wounded soul. She will be protected and healed by the love of Taylor, a private investigator whose first name we don’t find out until the last page.

I hated the first half of this book. Everyone in it is fabulously wealthy and horrible and miserable. Even Taylor can afford to take three-week vacations in France every year – we never learn how. Lindsay’s father and sister are truly vicious, and throughout the book they pop up and poke her to see if she’ll flinch. She always does. That’s my biggest problem with this book – Lindsay’s bone-deep inability to fight back, to protect herself, or to stand up for herself. She occasionally musters up some mild outrage, but not enough.

For instance, halfway through the book, when Lindsay is a successful career woman in her mid-twenties, she goes back to her hometown (San Francisco) because her grandmother has hurt herself in a fall. Her grandmother (by far the most sympathetic member of her family) commands her to stay in the mansion with her mindlessly evil father and sister. Lindsay doesn’t want to. Grandma says, “Nonsense. You’re a grown woman now, not eighteen years old. You must learn to deal with your father.” Lindsay fawningly agrees, goes to the mansion, and endures several days of explicit verbal abuse from Dad and Sis. If she was really a grown woman, she’d have managed to get them to shut up or gone to a hotel.

Oddly, Lindsay shows an unexpected and truly uncharacteristic streak of bravery when she meets Taylor. He approaches Lindsey in Central Park, announces that he has been hired as her new bodyguard and that he intends to follow her everywhere. She agrees and takes him to her apartment. I’d have been trying to signal the nearest policeman.

Nevertheless, Taylor’s relationship with Lindsay is what saves this book. Beyond Eden turns into one of those novels in which the hero, with patience, tenderness, love, and persistence, teaches a fearful heroine to trust and to give herself sexually. This love story is quite touching.

Taylor will also solve the mystery of who has been trying to kill Lindsay. There’s a nice large cast of suspects, since by this time Lindsay has been harmed by almost every living character in the book. Surprisingly, I thought that the mystery was the best part of Beyond Eden. The villain surprised me, even though Coulter was careful to supply plenty of damning evidence. By the end of the book, Lindsey was actually demonstrating a few symptoms of a backbone, too – she manages to defend herself from an attacker, for example.

In the end, this novel was an enjoyable read, but there were times when I thought I might never finish it. I find it more frustrating than I can say to watch a heroine passively be victimized, over and over and over again. The second half of the book turned things around, though, with a great hero, a nice love story, and a interesting mystery. If you can clench your teeth through the first half, you should find it satisfactory.