Bookends Jenny 'N' Dad

"Young fathers can be so busy--so dumb," writes Newspaperman and National % Public Radio Personality Gordon Baxter. He should know; he was one. But that was long ago, and in this peppery account of his relationship with new Daughter Jenny, born when Baxter was 54 and already a grandfather by his "first litter," the Texan turns the tables. Although a reluctant father- to-be ("Lamaze, LaLeche . . . LeHusband"), the good ole boy becomes a good, if old, dad. Baxter stays home to write in a woodsy cabin with his second wife Diane, nearly 20 years his junior, and he and Jenny share her strained veal ("unspeakable"), his exhibitionism (she upstages him in a local TV commercial) and a common wonder at nature. But the idyllic days are sometimes wistful because, Baxter writes, "I will probably never see her as a woman of 30." By his good-natured endurance of late fatherhood, Baxter has earned a damp eye or two in this jolly tale.