Seesaw

It all starts with a prize. The Price family wins a holiday trip to Florida and gets their photo in the paper. They're all there, the picture-perfect family in front of their gorgeous home. But it's awkward, adolescent, seventeen-year-old Hannah who catches someone's eye. And only days later, she's gone.

Val and Morris Price try not to panic when Hannah doesn't return from Camden Market on Sunday night. After all, she is a teenager. But when Hannah still hasn't shown up on Monday, they start to think the worst--then the ransom note comes with a demand for 500,000 and no police. After days of tallying assets and scrambling for money, Val makes the drop. Hannah comes home. Only what should be the end of a nightmare is just the beginning . . .

The Prices' have lost their business and their home. Their sudden change in fortune takes its toll, and family bonds slowly begin to disintegrate. Meanwhile, the desperate couple who kidnapped Hannah embark on a life of luxury that only fuels their twisted love. But what goes up must come down . . . with a crash.

"A neat plot . . . [with] dark flashes of hubris and nemesis." --The Guardian

"Moggach's subject is the rickety edifice we call the family, which she comes at armed with both a wrecking ball and an insatiable curiosity to note the particular way it collapses." --The Independent

"Deborah Moggach is a delight to read--her characters are wonderfully alive, and their stories grip us unequivocally. . . . The novel is enjoyable from first to last." --The Daily Telegraph

"It is characterisation at which Moggach excels. Her gift is to perceive and describe our confusions about life . . . and to write with feeling about the continual quest for love and happiness that is part of the human condition." --The Sunday Times