So Lovely A World...

Daughters Of An Amber Noon, on the other hand, is a tightly plotted thriller with less celebration of sisterhood and more conflict and angst. The point of view shifts from the women working to make their underground land inhabitable and even enjoyable to the Premier using all of his wit and ingenuity-not to mention his knowledge of Africa-to find the Unity. There is also an ongoing element of mystery as to the Premier's ultimate motives. Although not as prevalent as in Daughters Of A Coral Dawn, erotic suspense is certainly not lacking from Daughters Of An Amber Noon, as one of the young members of the Unity pines after the despondent Africa.

Which book is better? It depends entirely on the type of story you're in the mood for.

The books do share one fairly obvious flaw, and that is Forrest's tendency to overlook the flaws in women. Hey, I love 'em as much as the next lesbian, but I would also be the first to acknowledge that some women also abuse the environment-not to mention other human beings-and seek and use power unethically. I've certainly been in enough organizations to realize an all-woman membership does not guarantee utopia. Homicide, maybe.

However, these books also have strengths. Forrest subtly passes along lesbian history as her characters name the features of their terrains: Toklas River, Stein Lake, Radclyffe Falls, Rule Canyon, Faderman's View, etc.*

Daughters Of A Coral Dawn and Daughters Of An Amber Noon both encourage us to develop our own gifts and personalities and to support other lesbians in doing the same. They urge us to think-for better or for worse-about what an alternative system of leadership might be like. And perhaps, best of all, they're both fun, escapist reads, perfect for a summer day when you really do want to get away from it all.

*In case your history teacher left this part out, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) and Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967) were a famed lesbian literary couple. Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943) wrote one of the first openly discussed books about lesbians, The Well of Loneliness. Jane Rule wrote the lesbian classic, Desert of the Heart, and Lillian Faderman is a well-known lesbian historian.