Privileged

When Elise Duncan accepts a position as director of health at the Academy of Halcyon Heights, she’s relieved. Working at the prestigious private prep school allows her to be home with her children and critically ill husband during the evenings and over the summer.

Elise quickly discovers the Academy has no guidance counselors. After all, the mere presence of a counselor might attract students with issues. So instead students gravitate to Elise with their problems, by default moving her into the role of confidant. Time and again her young charges reveal how the school puts appearance and donations ahead of a safe and just learning environment.

Elise begins to understand the dynamics at work when she tries to help a student suffering with schizophrenia. There is no problem so compelling that it cannot be ignored, if the wealthy parents demand it. If a substantial donation is on the table, the Academy is willing to turn a blind eye, but there is a price.

When a major scandal hits Halcyon Heights, the school must confront deep-seated assumptions about race, social class, age, and gender. Young lives may be ruined forever in a desperate attempt to preserve the school’s prestigious reputation. Privilege, as Elise is about to discover, has rules all its own.

Jeanne Selander Miller has worked as a registered nurse in a major urban trauma center, as a hospital administrator, and as a high school health teacher.

She now runs a farm-to-table restaurant with her sister in the Adirondack Mountains of New York from the months of May to October. The rest of the year, she can be found writing in Vero Beach, Florida.

Jeanne Selander Miller's first three books are memoirs. A Breath Away, A Million Miles from Home, and The Healing Path Home were honored at the London Book Festival, the Paris International Book Festival, and the New York Book Festival.