AS LONG AS SHE NEEDS ME

Publisher's assistant finds true love with a wedding columnist: a debut novel from a former assistant at Turtle Bay, Villard, and Riverhead books.

For ten long years, Oscar Campbell has served as dogsbody to the famous Dawn of Dawn Books, a New York publishing concern with no literary pretensions whatsoever. Dawn is a harpy and proud of it, brandishing her wickedly expensive and very long nails at anyone who gets in her way, as she undercuts the competition right and left to get her sleazy authors onto bestseller lists everywhere. Dawn's notorious tantrums no longer bother Oscar much, and he's more or less used to her demands. But his new assignment throws him for a loop: he has to plan a wedding for, oh, 500 people in a matter of weeks. Who's Dawn’s lucky guy? Oscar suspects Gordon Fox, a lecherous literary agent with a yen for nubile publishing assistants in sweater sets. Dawn herself is carefully preserved but far from nubile; bookbiz scuttlebutt has it that she's invested millions in Gordon's money-machine agency, and there are ugly rumors of (shhh) conflict of interest. Oscar begins his research on weddings by flying to Maine for the nuptials of a preppy pal. There, he meets lovely Lauren LaRose, author of the popular "Aisle of White" magazine column. Lauren is desperate to escape the deadly grind of covering one silly theme ceremony after another, but she shows him the ropes. Little by little, Oscar falls head over heels while learning all there is to know about the horrendous cost and complexity of planning a big wedding. Feeling a certain loyalty to his tyrannical lady boss when he spots Gordon canoodling with yet another wide-eyed conquest, Oscar cooks up a scheme to simultaneously rescue Dawn and marry Lauren. Wonder of wonders, it works.

An amusing roman à clef from a publishing insider (nonfiction: The Secret Love of Sons, 1997).