Tender Offer

Jamie Ricklehouse couldn't have had a more privileged upbringing. Daddy, head of a prestigious Wall Street firm, adores his beautiful daughter, who is denied nothing: the best private schools, summers at the Connecticut shore, friendships with other kids at the tippety-top of the Upper East Side WASP social ladder. When Jamie decides to drop out of Vassar and marry Michael Murphy, an Irish Catholic from Utica (or is it Ithaca? Jamie can never remember), Mummy and Daddy Ricklehouse (now divorced) aren't thrilled, but accept her choice. Michael is given a position at The Firm, and after some rude financial awakenings (Jamie's trust fund never materializes) and the birth of two children, the couple settles into a humdrum routine: Michael makes money and Jamie spends it. When Michael leaves his famiy to live with an artist, for the first time Jamie has no one to take care of her. Everything around her begins to crumble (including The Firm, which at her father's death is left to his second wife, who turns out to be a Latin American revolutionary), but she manages to get through the tough times toonce againend up at the top. This is solid, at times very entertaining, commercial fiction, tailor-made for adaption as a movie or TV mini-series. Johnson also wrote The Two of Us. February