The residents of tony Willard Park have their own vision for their community, and when Nick, an ambitious developer, builds a flashy, outsize house in the neighborhood, they resent it. Then when Nick gives the property more visibility by cutting down the neighbors’ red maple, the simmering resentments explode. As order breaks down and people argue their competing versions of the American Dream, Langsdorf follows the chaos through its effects on the lives of three couples. Like her short fiction, Langsdorf’s debut novel is sharply observed and darkly funny, with a cast of vivid characters that include a lawyer with a pot habit, an outwardly unassuming wife compulsively drawn to trouble, a teenage girl caught up in a prank, and the complex community of Willard Park itself. Langsdorf will be in conversation with Susan Coll, author most recently of The Stager.
