Summary of Wednesday Martin's Primates of Park Avenue, a close-up look at the rarefied enclave of New York City’s Upper East Side, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world. As Martin chronicles her stressful, and sometimes hilarious, efforts to fit into a world where preschoolers have play dates on private planes, she discovers the neighborhood’s real heart when tragedy strikes her family.

When Martin and her husband started their family they were concerned about the lingering effects of the September 11, 2001 attacks on downtown Manhattan. For this reason, they moved from the trendy, bohemian West Village to the formal, conservative Upper East Side for its excellent schools, proximity to Central Park, and the fact that her husband had many relatives already living there. Martin knew that social customs would be different, but she was stunned by the cultural onslaught she experienced even though the distance between the two neighborhoods was only a few miles.