Street Called Straight

When Henry Guion confesses to his daughter that he has embezzled every cent his clients trusted to him, he offers her no comfort-only the certainty of prison and the social death that follows. Olivia has always moved in the rarified world of American wealth and English aristocracy, engaged to a dashing colonel whose career depends on untarnished reputation. Then Peter Davenant appears. He is rich, powerful, and still bitter from the day Olivia rejected his proposal. He will pay every debt, silence every scandal, but his price is nothing less than her gratitude, her dependence, her silence. The novel traces the collision between pride and necessity, between the life Olivia thought she'd have and the one that remains. What does it mean to walk a "straight" street when every path leads through compromise? King constructs his drama with quiet precision, letting the reader feel how a single secret can unravel a family's future while forcing four people to confront what they actually value.