God Bless the Child — Ellen Feldman

Bailey Bender doesn't think of herself as a failure, more like a case of arrested success. She's fled an enviable career as a hot-shot investigative reporter, an admirable marriage, and a hectic, New York City life. Now she's living a quiet, simple existence on the wrong side of the social divide in the swanky Hamptons, working in a bookstore, and trying to figure out why she walked away. She knows the answer has something to do with the baby she gave up for adoption years ago. That's why she's begun to search for her child. She never dreams her quest will be related to a nineteen-year-old girl's tragic death at the seaside house of one of the summer celebrities, or to the charismatic twenty-something Charlie Prinze, who is charged with manslaughter in the case.
Though rumors of rough sex, love quarrels, suicide, and out-of-control teenagers convulse the town and electrify the media, Bailey is determined to remain on the sidelines. But a troubled young girl she has taken under her wing, a pained man with his own parenting problems, and Charlie Prinze himself draw Bailey into the summer scandal and force her to face issues she thought she'd resolved years ago.