Fierce people - Dirk Wittenborn

1978: Lower East Side, New York Fifteen-year-old Finn Earl's mother, Liz, is a thirty-two-year old masseuse with a taste for cocaine. When Liz's habit forces them to flee the city, they find protection under the wing of one of her clients, ageing billionaire Mr Osborne. In Vlyvalle, a golden playground for the super-rich, Finn discovers a people who are stranger, more savage, and more secretive than any tribe in National Geographic. Offered a new life and new friends he falls in love and grows up fast. But, on what should be the happiest night of Finn's life, on an island in the middle of a private lake, naked and high with Osborne's bewitching granddaughter, someone is watching him from the depths of the forest..and laughing. 'The ingredients of this study of adolescent loss-of-innocence conform to a well-tried formula, used here with energy and fluency,,,he is both savage and funny' Sunday Telegraph 'Wittenborn re-creates the mind of a 15-year-old with verve and humour..the jokes are good..the dialogue is crisp ' The Telegraph