Is American Dream part of problem? Following group of privileged students who tragically bully a classmate, Johnson’s debut novel finds something rotten in wealthy Calif. community

The most dangerous place on Earth? That would be middle school, according to a teen in Lindsey Lee Johnson’s entrancing debut novel, “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth.”

That this 13-year-old lives in one of the planet’s most posh communities, Mill Valley, Calif., amid natural, cultural and material splendor, does not undermine Johnson’s assessment. In her novel, Johnson, native to the area, makes a case that there is something rotten about this overwhelming splendor. She launches her book with an epigraph from John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”

“The Most Dangerous Place on Earth” revolves around eighth-graders who bully a fellow student to the point of tragedy. The book then follows these students through high school, writing chapters from their points of view, subtly tracing the effects of this series of events on their lives. The book returns now and again to their young teacher, Molly Nicoll, who desperately wants to connect with them yet remains ignorant of the crime they committed together.

Johnson convincingly captures the varied inner lives of these children. She describes them as alien to adults and young kids, and, at least for some of these wealthy teens, lacking ethics and morals. She also portrays with precision the cringe-worthy dance between adults and teenagers, who yearn for support from their elders while rejecting offers of help as hopelessly lame.

Here’s one of the kids, Cally Broderick, upon being summoned by Ms. Flax, who works in the eighth-grade resource office:

Johnson beautifully lays out the complex factors that lead Cally and her friends to brutally bully a fellow student. The cruel episode has a tragic momentum that is hard to read and also hard to put down. Johnson’s novel possesses a propulsive quality, an achievement in a book of, after the initial traumatic event, short character sketches. Yet it moves forward relentlessly, towing the reader with it. I read this book in one long sitting.

Beyond exploring teenagers’ capacity for cruelty, Johnson returns again and again to the theme of wealth. She offers lush descriptions of the abundance of Mill Valley, where, according to a recent profile of the town in The New York Times, the median price for a single-family home is $1.58 million. These children are awash in riches and, for most of us, privileged beyond comprehension. Here’s a description of one teen’s shopping habit:

In almost all cases, the parents of these wealthy kids are absent, distracted by the job of making money or relentlessly driving their kids toward a future of similar, or perhaps even more substantial, wealth. The parents in Johnson’s novel are emotionally and even physically detached from their children, and their children know it and resent it. Amid all of the plenty, there is an emptiness, a pursuit of a sort of empty and meaningless accumulation.

These people are the winners in our American society, providing their families with the American Dream of sumptuous homes, safe communities, lavish travel, exceptional educations and the finest of everything else. But what is it all for? The first epigraph of the novel — there are three — quotes a Mill Valley-area resident in a 1978 NBC News report, “I Want It All Now!”: “The pot at the end of the rainbow is not money. I know because I have it.”

Of course, “rich kids have problems too” is not necessarily a deep insight. Johnson’s fresh take is the subtle political angle she weaves throughout the novel. These are not just rich kids with issues; these are rich kids who, she seems to be arguing, have issues because they are so rich. Or, more precisely, because their parents have done what it takes to provide these rich lives for them. The American Dream, she seems to be saying, is the problem. Even the winners lose.

That feels fresh. It is a particularly poignant message for today as we, as a nation, grapple with rising inequality and widespread questioning of the viability of the American Dream. We ask, is it dead? But Johnson is asking a different question, a good one. She asks whether there is something fundamentally askew with this bedrock American idea. Her book seems to say, yes, there is something rotten amid the uneven splendor. Just look at the kids who should be the happiest on earth.