A Palm Beach Scandal by Susannah Marren; St. Martin’s Griffin, 2020; ISBN 9781250-228086; 327 pages, $16.99
SAN DIEGO — Amid the glitzy lifestyle that author Susannah Marren described so well in her previous novel, A Palm Beach Wife, the Cutler family sisters, Elodie and Aubrey, face a real-life crisis that will challenge all their conceptions in their label-conscious bubble world.
After yet another miscarriage, Elodie and her husband James consider their alternatives for having children. James doesn’t want to adopt because he’d like a biological child of his own. A surrogate for Elodie would be one possibility, but James would like the child to carry some of Elodie’s DNA as well. He persuades her that she should ask her sister Aubrey to be the surrogate. In her early 30s, Aubrey is eight years younger than Elodie and always has idolized her big sister.
There are problems with this idea. What will Aubrey’s boyfriend Tyler think of her being impregnated by another man, even if it is by artificial insemination? How would Aubrey feel being both an aunt and biological mother to the child? How will the birth of the child affect the sisters’ relationship? How would the sisters’ parents — Simon and Veronica Cutler — take to the idea? And finally, what would be the reaction in the ever-gossiping, always measuring Palm Beach society?
An early surprise in this tale is that Veronica, the girls’ mother, after some hesitation, signs onto the idea, being swept up with the idea of finally having a grandchild. But Simon, the girls’ rich, social leader father, is coldly and summarily opposed to the idea. He sets about trying to dissuade his daughters from going through with the plan.
As the plot develops, readers are challenged to redefine commonly accepted notions of “family,” and to ask themselves the age-old question concerning the relative impacts of “nature” vs. “nurture.”
*
Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com