Peyton Place Author:Gracd Metalious In Peyton Place, said Allison MacKenzie, trying to explain her home town to her New York friends, "a comeuppance is the nemesis of anyone who has been too cocksure, or too powerful, or too dishonest for too long." And the people in Peyton Place do get their comeuppance again and again. There are old established people in Peyton Place; those who ... more »are powerful in town affairs and those who are not; and there are the poor shack people and those who work at the mill, and the web of their interlacing lives is skillfully woven. There is an attractive young widow, Constance MacKenzie, and her sensitive daughter Allison, living outwardly normal lives that conceal a dark secret past...Leslie Harrington, rich, powerful, implacable, whose only son Rodney leads him to a life of bitterness ... Lucas Cross, an evil, degenerate, impoverished drunk and his beautiful stepdaughter Selena, who destroyed him ... Dr. Matthew Swain, gruff, blunt but kindly, whose desperate decision to take one life to save two ended in unexpected tragedy ... these people and many others move realistically through the pages of this sweeping story. And each of them emerges with a distinct and recognizable personality, with a life that has begun before the first page and will go on after the last.« less