In the last few months of senior year at the Avalon Hills prep school where her father, George, was a teacher and a hero for saving students from a gunman, Sadie Woodbury watched as her father is removed from their home in handcuffs. It must be a mistake. The police are wrong. They must be. Her father, the best man in the world, whose family created the prep school and parceled up their land so Avalon Hills was born, cannot be the man police described as they read her father his rights, handcuffed him, walked him out to the cop car, put him inside, and drove him away. Her mother, a nurse, was in shock. Sadie, watching her hero, father, and teacher disappear from sight couldn't get it through her head that the same man -- her father -- hero of the town, celebrated, loving, and willing to take down a gunman intent on killing children at his school could possibly be the same one that girls from her school had accused of sexual impropriety during their last ski outing. Sadie's head was still whirling from her brand new love with Jimmy, her first ever sexual encounter -- was it moments or years before? -- whirling now from shock, anger, and disbelief. How is this possible? It had to be a mistake or the girls (there were girls) her father had been sexually involved with? Somewhere along the way, her whole family had fallen through an insane rabbit hole and ended up in bizarro land.
George Woodbury's life and his family were in shock. How could this be? According to their lawyer -- and the Woodbury's son, who had become a lawyer and lived in New York -- George would have to stay in jail at least until Tuesday, after the long weekend, when he would appear before a judge and the case against him would be dismissed because it wasn't true. George would not be arraigned, no bail would be set, and he would be back home with his family and return to his life. Alexander was certain of that.
Zoe Whittall's novel would be barely a couple of chapters if George Woodbury was the victim of a colossal mistake like being wrongfully accused of another man's abuse and misuse of 13-year-old girls under his care on a ski trip. Whittall is a better author than that. She would not drag the reader through an emotional rollercoaster for nothing. Would she?
Having been present when police took my father away from an anniversary family celebration in cuffs and accusing him of exposing himself in a public park and running from the police, which ramped up the severity of misdemeanor flashing to felony flight, made my interest in The Best Kind of People personal and my fascination with the subject and the emotional fallout acute as I dove head first into the novel. I was not disappointed . . . at first . . . and plunged into the Woodbury family's emotional cauldron as the waters heated up.
I understood Jimmy's mother's boyfriend's interest in writing about the Woodbury tragedy from Sadie's perspective, not just because she was living with them and he had access to the whole family's pain and distress, but because as a writer I sympathize with the urge to get closer to the fire and risk getting burned if I get the story on paper. I didn't expect Alexander to be gay and having his first gay sexual encounter with a teacher and coach, but the only gay people I knew were salesmen and workers at the shoe store where I first worked and sex wasn't a common break room topic while sipping a Pepsi or eating a microwave burger. I had no experience of living in an exclusive community or going to prep school. My life was middle class all the way down the line. I was as eager to get to the heart of the matter as Jimmy was to write about it. My only peephole was through the eyes of those most closely associated with the family through Whittall's words.
During the months that George was in jail, the family were roasted slowly over a barbecue, basted with regret, disdain, outrage, fear, and acceptance. Sadie's mom was anxious to put their house on the market and use the money to pay George's lawyer since the family bank accounts held far less than she imagined. Where had the money gone?
It is never easy reading about, much less being involved, in a close knit family's destruction, especially for so little payoff. The ending seemed far too convenient and George never did get a chance to respond to the allegations nor were the allegations more than stories told by a group of girls bullied into adding their stones to the pile ready for brandishing. The individual stories about the Woodbury family were engrossing, surprising, and fascinating, but were less than equal to the rest of the story about what George Woodbury did while chaperoning barely pubescent girls on a school ski trip. Reading The Best Kind of People was rather lacking in sound and fury -- and answers -- in the long run. I give Zoe Whittall's novel 3.5 stars out of 5 for the end result . . . and lack thereof. A 21st century version of Ordinary People which fizzles like waterlogged fireworks.
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