Ex-U.S. Commerce secretary and Blackstone Group co-founder Pete Peterson has had a long side career as an author of books on fiscal policy, including 2004’s Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It. Now his daughter, Holly Peterson, a cultural editor at Newsweek, is launching a book career of her own. But she’s tackling topics far more entertaining than how to save Social Security.
Peterson’s debut novel, The Manny, sends up the latest must-have accoutrement for Manhattan’s Upper East Side elite: male nannies. Wealthy financiers and their spouses, especially those with school-age sons in the house, are hiring young men to pitch in with child care -- and to help the little tykes learn cool-kid pursuits like snowboarding and throwing a curveball. Mannies are especially popular, says Peterson, in the rarefied handful of blocks between 72nd and 79th Streets and Park and Fifth Avenues, where the 40-year-old journalist grew up and where she now lives with her husband, Richard Kimball, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.
The story centers on the Woodfields: an M&A lawyer and his social-climbing wife. The couple become part of what Peterson calls the “wheels up” crowd, named for the phrase they use to brag about their leisure travel on private jets (as in, “I’d love to, but it’s wheels up at 3 o’clock for Aspen, daaarling”). Only after she becomes romantically involved with her strapping, down-to-earth “manny” does Mrs. Woodfield finally recognize how shallow her pursuit of status within this group really is.
Peterson is careful to stress that each character in her tale is a composite and not based on a specific individual. “The husband in the book is nothing like my father or husband,” she tells Institutional Investor.
Her satirical work is certainly more suited to beach -- or jet-to-Aspen -- reading than are her dad’s heavy tomes, and it’s far more likely to enjoy commercial success. In fact, Holly has already struck a $1 million deal with Dial Press to publish The Manny and a follow-up novel. And Columbia Pictures and Red Wagon Entertainment, the company that produced the recent films Jarhead and Memoirs of a Geisha, have bought the movie rights. Peterson’s preference for the title role? Former Saturday Night Live star and current film icon Adam Sandler.
