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Based on the true story of the kidnapping of an Exxon executive in suburban New Jersey, The GoodLife is a novel about an unlikely pair of criminals: a middle-aged, middle-class husband and wife who are deeply in debt.
On an otherwise ordinary spring morning, Stona Brown stops his car at the foot of his driveway to pick up the newspaper. Suddenly he's forced into a van by a couple who take him to a rental storage locker, where he is held for a ransom of $18 million. His kidnappers think it will be just a matter of a simple transaction - Theo Wolkoviak, a former security guard, and Colleen, a housewife and mother, believe they are entitled to more - to a taste of the good life.
Told from five different points of view, The GoodLife unfolds over the course of three excruciating days. As Theo and Colleen's carefully wrought scheme begins to falter and their desperation mounts, the novel becomes a penetrating study of the seductive danger of rationalization. Scribner's chilling narrative becomes increasingly disturbing as we are compelled to identify with both villain and victim, and forced to explore our own ideas about right and wrong.
