Miranda Dalton has everything she could have dreamed of. But heroines often find that "everything" isn't enough, and Miranda is no exception in this witty and biting satire.
Brilliant and beautiful Miranda Dalton is at a crossroads. Living in the elite enclave of Lincoln, Massachusetts, in a beautiful old Victorian with her old-money professor husband and her two perfect boys, free to indulge her twin passions for collecting fine art - though she's not averse to the occasional excellent forgery - and finer wine, she's made it by anyone's definition. She's even managed to keep a dark past suppressed. But despite Miranda's lush life, she's not happy.
Finally being accepted to Lincoln's Conservation Commission couldn't come at a better time. She keenly detects that liberal Lincoln is hiding something: fear. And that fear, she understands, is nothing but thinly-veiled hypocrisy.
Little by little, that old dark side comes to the fore as Miranda hatches a game plan, determined to turn the finer points of zoning law into a struggle for Lincoln's very soul. Facing her true nature for the first time, she's determined to make Lincoln do the same.
In this biting satire of upper-to rust liberal culture, Miranda harnesses the power of boycotts and back-room deals, secret meetings with the governor, a genius PR campaign, and an eye-popping amount of money to turn her Conservation Commission into a mirror - one that shows picture-perfect Lincoln for what it really is.
But does Miranda know that she, herself, is being revealed, too? Will her faithful family decide that this is finally too much?
Does Miranda even care?
Howard Foster is from Newton, Massachusetts, just a few miles from Lincoln but quite different culturally. He wrote about Lincoln because he thinks it is a unique place and emblematic of much of what is wrong with the country. When not writing fiction he is a lawyer practicing in the arcane arena of the anti-racketeering law, known as RICO. It too is focused on what is wrong with society. Howard is a critical thinker if nothing else. One of the high points of his legal career was arguing a case in the US Supreme Court, where he never expected to be found when he was a young lawyer, except on a public tour. The case ended well, enabling him to start his own RICO law firm. He lives with his wife and two children outside Chicago.
