Garden Lakes

Charlie Martens, an Arizona newspaper columnist whose career has been built on lies, looks back to where the deceit started. He realizes the deceit began many years ago during the summer of his youth at Garden Lakes, an unfinished housing development, where he and several fellow prep-school students were given the job of helping to build a house there. When their two chaperones disappeared, leaving the boys unsupervised, orders quickly breaks down. Meanwhile, the story has flashed forward to Charlie at 37, in trouble for a controversial column he plans to write.