More Than Enough

After a gang of neighborhood boys attacks Steven and his sister, Jenny, the Parkers are doing very well on the resulting settlement money. The family's dream of success in their new home of Salt Lake City seems fulfilled. But their period of high living soon ends, and each family member grasps at what he or she wants most. Fourteen-year-old Jenny longs for normalcy, a state she tries to find in her Mormon friends' religion. Steven's father clings to his desire for affluence, even as his more practical wife tires of his dreams. For Steven, nothing is more important than keeping his teetering family together. More Than Enough is a breathtaking dissection of human behavior and the American Dream. In it the break-up of a very ordinary family becomes utterly heart breaking. A novel that is as powerful in its dismantling of unremarkable lives as Andre Dubus III's House of Sand and Fog.