The Beneficiary

Fortune Misfortune and the Story of My Father. Land, houses, and money tumbled from one generation to the next on the eight-hundred-acre estate built by Scotts investment banker great-grandfather on Philadelphias Main Line. There was an obligation to protect it, a license to enjoy it, a duty to pass it on but it was impossible to know in advance how all that extraordinary good fortune might influence the choices made over a lifetime. In this warmly felt tale of an American familys fortunes, journalist Janny Scott excavates the rarefied world that shaped her charming, unknowable father, Robert Montgomery Scott.