Mendelson returns to the well-to-do residents of Manhattan's Upper West Side for the second book of a projected trilogy (after Morningside Heights
). Peter Frankl is the conflicted paterfamilias who regrets his early marriage and pursuit of wealth and wonders about his reluctant-to-marry children. His son, Louis, is a Harvard M.B.A. slated for Wall Street riches; his daughter, Susan, is a student in musicology. The complicated and star-crossed plot begins with a party given by Susan's best friend, Mallory, that introduces all the younger characters. Susan and Louis are called away from the party with the news that their mother, Lesley, is in a coma after a car accident. Will she live? Do her husband and kids want her to live? And who is writing strange notes to Peter at the office? And most important, will these children of privilege stick with their own kind or venture down the social ladder? This is a deliberately old-fashioned novel of manners, morals, character and happy endings, reality be damned. A certain kind of reader will be eager for Mendelson's third. (Aug. 9)
