At the heart of Union Atlantic lies a test of wills between a young banker, Doug Fanning, and a retired schoolteacher, Charlotte Graves, whose two dogs have begun to speak to her. When Doug builds an ostentatious mansion on land that Charlotte’s grandfather donated to the town of Finden, Massachusetts, she determines to oust him in court.
As a senior manager of Union Atlantic bank, a major financial conglomerate, Doug is embroiled in the company’s struggle to remain afloat. It is Charlotte’s brother, Henry Graves, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, who must keep a watchful eye on Union Atlantic and the entire financial system.
Drawn into Doug and Charlotte’s intensifying conflict is Nate Fuller, a troubled high-school senior who unwittingly stirs powerful emotions in each of them.
Written over the course of five years and finished the week that Lehman Brothers’ collapse set off the Wall Street panic of 2008, it portrays the gilded age of the first decade of the 21st century and the conflicts over class, corporate power, and personal identity that shape contemporary life.
