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Moral Compass
Cover of Moral Compass
Moral Compass
A Novel
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • At an elite private school in Massachusetts, a wide circle of lives will be forever changed by a devastating series of events in Danielle Steel’s riveting new novel.
Saint Ambrose Prep is a place where the wealthy send their children for the best possible education, with teachers and administrators from the Ivy League, and graduates who become future lawyers, politicians, filmmakers, and CEOs. Traditionally a boys-only school, Saint Ambrose has just enrolled one hundred and forty female students for the first time. Even though most of the kids on the campus have all the privilege in the world, some are struggling, wounded by their parents’ bitter divorces, dealing with insecurity and loneliness. In such a heightened environment, even the smallest spark can become a raging fire.
One day after the school’s annual Halloween event, a student lies in the hospital, her system poisoned by dangerous levels of alcohol. Everyone in this sheltered community—parents, teachers, students, police, and the media—are left trying to figure out what actually happened. Only the handful of students who were there when she was attacked truly know the answers and they have vowed to keep one another’s secrets. As details from the evening emerge, powerful families are forced to hire attorneys and less powerful families watch helplessly. Parents’ marriages are jeopardized, and students’ futures are impacted. No one at Saint Ambrose can escape the fallout of a life-altering event.
In this compelling novel, Danielle Steel illuminates the dark side of one drunken night, with its tragic consequences, from every possible point of view. As the drama unfolds, the characters will reach a crossroads where they must choose between truth and lies, between what is easy and what is right, and find the moral compass they will need for the rest of their lives.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • At an elite private school in Massachusetts, a wide circle of lives will be forever changed by a devastating series of events in Danielle Steel’s riveting new novel.
Saint Ambrose Prep is a place where the wealthy send their children for the best possible education, with teachers and administrators from the Ivy League, and graduates who become future lawyers, politicians, filmmakers, and CEOs. Traditionally a boys-only school, Saint Ambrose has just enrolled one hundred and forty female students for the first time. Even though most of the kids on the campus have all the privilege in the world, some are struggling, wounded by their parents’ bitter divorces, dealing with insecurity and loneliness. In such a heightened environment, even the smallest spark can become a raging fire.
One day after the school’s annual Halloween event, a student lies in the hospital, her system poisoned by dangerous levels of alcohol. Everyone in this sheltered community—parents, teachers, students, police, and the media—are left trying to figure out what actually happened. Only the handful of students who were there when she was attacked truly know the answers and they have vowed to keep one another’s secrets. As details from the evening emerge, powerful families are forced to hire attorneys and less powerful families watch helplessly. Parents’ marriages are jeopardized, and students’ futures are impacted. No one at Saint Ambrose can escape the fallout of a life-altering event.
In this compelling novel, Danielle Steel illuminates the dark side of one drunken night, with its tragic consequences, from every possible point of view. As the drama unfolds, the characters will reach a crossroads where they must choose between truth and lies, between what is easy and what is right, and find the moral compass they will need for the rest of their lives.
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  • From the book Chapter 1

    It was the day after Labor Day, one of those perfect, golden September mornings in Massachusetts, as the students of Saint Ambrose Preparatory School began to arrive. The school was over a hundred and twenty years old, and its imposing stone buildings looked as distinguished as the colleges where most of the students would be accepted once they graduated. Many illustrious men had attended Saint Ambrose and gone on to make their marks on the world.

    It was a historic day for Saint Ambrose. After ten years of heated debate, and two years of preparation, a hundred and forty female students were about to arrive and join the eight hundred male students. It was part of a three-­year program that would ultimately add four hundred young women to the student body, bringing it to a total of twelve hundred students. This first year, they had accepted sixty female freshmen, forty sophomores, thirty-­two juniors, and eight seniors, who had either recently moved to the East Coast, or had some valid reason to want to change schools as a senior and not graduate with the class they’d gone through high school with until then. Each of the female applicants had been carefully vetted to make sure she was up to the standards, morally and academically, of Saint Ambrose.

    Two dorms had been built to accommodate the new female students. A third would be finished within a year, with a fourth scheduled to be built the year after that. So far, all the new additions and changes had gone smoothly. There had been lengthy seminars for the past year to assist the existing faculty with the transition from teaching at an all-­male school to co-­ed classes. Its advocates had insisted that it would improve the academic standing of the school, as girls tended to be more dedicated to their studies at the same age, and settled down to academics earlier. Others said it would make the students better rounded, learning to live and work, collaborate, cooperate, and compete with members of the opposite sex, which was after all more representative of the “real world” they would be entering in college and thereafter.

    The school’s enrollment had diminished slightly in recent years, with most of their competitors having already gone co-­ed, which most students preferred. They couldn’t stay current and compete if they didn’t go co-­ed. But the battle had been hard won, and the headmaster, Taylor Houghton IV, was one of the last to be convinced of its benefits. He could see endless complications as a result, including student romances, which they didn’t have to deal with as an all-­male school. Lawrence Gray, head of the English department, had asked if they would be renaming the school Saint Sodom and Gomorrah. After thirty-­seven years at Saint Ambrose, he had been the most vehement voice against the change. Traditional, conservative, and privately a bitter person, his objections were eventually overruled by those who wanted the school to keep up with the times, no matter how challenging. Larry Gray’s sour attitude stemmed from the fact that ten years into his tenure at Saint Ambrose, his wife had left him for the father of a tenth-­grade boy. He had never fully recovered, and never remarried. He had stayed for another twenty-­seven years since, but was an unhappy person though an excellent teacher. He wrung the best academic performance possible out of each of the boys, and sent them off to college well prepared to shine at the university of their choice.

    Taylor Houghton was fond of Larry, affectionately calling him their resident curmudgeon, and was fully prepared for Larry’s grousing...
About the Author-
  • Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular authors, with almost a billion copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include Spy, Child’s Play, The Dark Side, Lost and Found, Blessing in Disguise, Silent Night, and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death; A Gift of Hope, a memoir of her work with the homeless; Pure Joy, about the dogs she and her family have loved; and the children’s books Pretty Minnie in Paris and Pretty Minnie in Hollywood.
Reviews-
  • Library Journal

    August 1, 2019

    Massachusetts-based Saint Ambrose Prep, where the wealthy send their children so they, too, can become Ivy League top dogs, has enrolled female students for the first time. By Halloween, one young woman has landed in the hospital, and the few students who know what happened have sworn one another to secrecy.

    Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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A Novel
Danielle Steel
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