Well well, how have I managed to avoid this one all my life? I well remember the TV series, although I was too young to watch it, I heard the names of Alison and Constance MacKenzie and Rodney Harrington bandied about. I tried to imagine reading it as a Nice 1954 Housewife sitting under the dryer at the beauty parlor and how shocked I might have been, since there is nothing in it that couldn't today be on a daytime soap opera. I mean she hits all the notes, there is lots of "unmarried" sex, girls behaving "wantonly", illegal abortion, adultery, rape, alcoholism, illegitimate children, etc. etc., and of course a murder and a trial. As a novel, it was not as badly written as the Trash-of-Today like Fifty Shades, but it's still quite silly overall. Thinking of it as sort of Classic Americana Kitsch,, though, it's pretty entertaining.