Disobedience , on the other hand, is told through the eyes of Henry Shaw who was seventeen years old at the time of the events that he is describing. Kevin and Beth Shaw are a reasonably happy married couple who began their family in rural Vermont and moved to the outskirts of Chicago when Kevin received a teaching position in the history department of a college preparatory school. Beth is a well-respected pianist, giving lessons and playing privately with several groups including a folk band. They have two children, Henry and Elvira. Henry begins his narrative by explaining his crime against his mother.
Henry begins to track the affair by printing out the email and compiling it.
Beth, then, as the woman in crisis, is seen through the lens of her son whose sexual awakening seems tied to his mother's experimentation. Henry had never imagined his parents as sexual beings until his discovery of his mother's infidelity and indulges in a mental juxtaposition of his own love life with that of his mother's lover. The summer before Beth begins her affair, Henry entered his first serious relationship at music camp with a young girl named Lily. Now he wonders if he should try the lines from Polloco's email in his own long distance relationship. The novel's periphery characters are where Hamilton seems to have the most fun.