by Peter Taylor (Author)
Gerald Dudley is an executive at a hardware company in St. Louis, living the quintessential bachelor life with his young son, Quint. He is also a man who aspires beyond his means and class. When Gerald meets the wealthy divorc?e Ann Lauterbach and the two marry, life changes irrevocably for Quint. He enters a social world of private schools and debutante balls known to him only through his father's longings. As Quint's attachment to his stepmother and her "means" grows, her marriage to his father begins to crumble in small, subtle ways, which ultimately leads to larger, more devastating consequences.
Author Biography
Peter Taylor, the author of eight story collections, including The Old Forest and Other Stories (Picador) and three novels, including A Summons to Memphis, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and In the Tennessee Country (Picador), died in 1994. A Tennessee native, he had lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife, poet Eleanor Ross Taylor.