Beautiful Life

It could happen to any family... What if it happened to yours?

When the Bergamots move to the city, they're unsure how well they'll adapt. Soon though, Richard is consumed by his new job and Liz, who has given up her career, is hectically playing mother to six-year-old Coco and fifteen-year-old Jake. But the day Jake unthinkingly forwards a sexually explicit email attachment sent to him by a young girl is the last day of the Bergamots' comfortable middle-class existence. Within hours, the video clip is not only all over Jake's school, but all over the city - and all over the internet. Faced with impossible choices, what Richard and Liz do next risks destroying not only their marriage, their daughter and their place in the community, but also Jake - the child they have set out to protect.

Review: "Helen Schulman's trenchant social observations and precise, lucid writing are brought to bear on the timely story of a crisis in the life of the Bergamot family.... Schulman takes on a controversial topic with depth, evenhandedness, and warmth. Spare and focused, This Beautiful Life packs a wallop."--Kate Christensen, author of The Epicure's Lament and The Great Man