BLUE BLOOD <i> by Craig Unger (William Morrow: $19.95) </i>

This story would be the envy of any soap opera writer: The drama of a woman (Standard Oil heiress Rebekah Harkness) famous because of her glamour and wealth but secretly despised because of her bitter coldness toward family, delusions of artistic genius and decadence of spirit. Journalist Craig Unger knows how to play up a good story and so, not surprisingly, “Blue Blood” is a model page-turner. While Rebekah’s daughter Edith seeks out her mother for comfort after the death of her father, for instance, Unger makes sure we empathize with Edith’s feelings of vulnerability, loneliness and despair before confronting us with Rebekah’s response: “What do you want?”

Perhaps to create a clear villain, Unger doesn’t extend this empathy to Rebekah herself. Thus her struggles to impress her snobby businessman-father by clinging to cafe society are not depicted with any understanding of her desperate needs. By the time Rebekah reaches motherhood, however, it becomes next to impossible to sympathize with her. She was at least partially responsible for Edith’s suicide and she blamed Terry, her other daughter, for giving birth to a disabled child.

Books such as “Blue Blood” help us remember that wealth doesn’t always bring happiness and offer a neat moral parable: Rebekah ultimately paid the price for her blind pursuit of glamour, turning to drugs, alcohol and hormones in a desperate attempt to recapture her youthful energy. Unger ventures more deeply into his story than most star biographers, however, uncovering a cautionary tale about the American dream.