The Favor

Widowed Ellen Ross, an urban professor, had no warning of what awaited her and her three children when she married Garth Epstein, whose resume read like a fairy tale: handsome, charming, well-educated and owner of one of oldest and largest ranches in East Texas. What it didn’t list was: narcissistic, arrogant and controlling, with an undertone of darkness that only Jennifer, her precocious oldest, seemed to perceive. Garth uprooted the family and moved them to Lake Point, Texas, a place deeply steeped in old bloodline traditions and prejudices against women, a piercing thorn in Jennifer’s liberated and extremely competitive side.