All We Ever Wanted

Nina Browning has married into Nashville's wealthy establishment. Her husband has just made a fortune selling his tech company, and their son has a place at Princeton. Even so, the small-town girl from a middle-class home that she used to be still asks whether she has drifted from who she was.

Tom Volpe is a single father who works several jobs to raise his headstrong daughter, Lyla. After years of loneliness and hard going, he can finally ease off a little: Lyla has won a scholarship to Windsor Academy, the city's most prestigious private school. She is happy there and doing well, though she does not always fit in among so much money, and Tom's overprotectiveness makes it harder.

Then a photograph taken at a party, in a drunken moment, begins to circulate. It spreads fast, and the Windsor community splits into camps, trading blame and argument.

Tom, Nina and Lyla are drawn together by the scandal, and each has to weigh loyalty to family against personal values. The novel is contemporary fiction told in the three voices of its central characters, and it moves at the quick pace of a school scandal that no one can contain. Its concerns are wealth, privilege and the cost of doing right.