Pink Glass Houses: A Novel
“For heaven’s sake, what kind of a nitwit parks in a marked space that doesn’t belong to them?” Charlotte fumes as she spies a car in Patricia Walker’s private parking slot.
“After I hung up with Patricia, I raced back to Sunset and called Miami Beach Tow. By the time they arrived, the offender had already left the scene. Did you know you still have to pay the tow guys just for coming out, even if they illegally parked vehicle isn’t there anymore? It’s like getting a UTI after a bad one-night stand.
“By then, Patricia had gone nuclear. . . . ‘My spot! Who would do this!’”
Yes, all this over a parking spot in front of an elementary school.
One might think: get a life. But this is life for a group of mothers at Sunset Academy, a school every parent wants their kids to attend. They also want their children—and themselves—to be at the top of the social heap. It is a cutthroat culture, reminiscent of middle school social maneuverings, but these are grown women. And the woman holding the reins of power is Patricia Walker, whose husband is a billionaire who lives in a multimillion-dollar pink glass house.
Patricia’s reign seems impenetrable until Melody, a newcomer from Wichita, Kansas, of all places, shows up. Sure, Patricia has her detractors. There are others in the school who question the values parents like Patricia exhibit as well as their actions, but when your husband is a billionaire you can get away with a whole lot.
There’s Charlotte, the PTA president of the PTA always ready to do Patricia’s bidding since the Walkers’ largesse funds many of her big projects, making her look like a star. On the other side of the equation is Darcy, a lawyer who is obsessively contemptuous of Patricia and who has befriended Melody. The latter seems like a sweet and rather pallid Midwesterner—someone who is way out of league with many of the mothers at Sunset. But it turns out that Melody, who lives in an average house and has a non-billionaire husband, is more than she seems. When in Wichita, she had started a small company, just to help fund nonprofits which had, over time grown into a business big enough to sustain 11 full-time employees.
Told in multiple third person multiple voices, Pink Glass Houses captures the personalities of all involved as the story moves forward quickly and the plot deepens in interesting ways from just in-fighting between women jostling for power to white collar crimes.