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A searing debut novel about a striving finance student, the line between ambition and greed, and the disordered politics of our era
â[An] auspicious debut . . . a wildly entertaining drama of ambition and consequence.â âSAM SACKS, Wall Street Journal
âDeadly serious in ambition, wildly entertaining in execution, Ways and Means is a remarkably accomplished debut . . . Every line of this gorgeous novel glows with Leffertsâ intelligence and compassion.â âANTHONY MARRA, New York Times bestselling author of Mercury Pictures Presents and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
âA work of enormous wit, humor, and passion that captures life in turbo capitalist America with compassion and grace.â âGARY SHTEYNGART, New York Times bestselling author of Our Country Friends
âTotally absorbing . . . Lefferts delivers The Great Gatsby for the 21st-century: irreverent, sexy, and sharp. A major event.â âJESSI JEZEWSKA STEVENS, author of The Exhibition of Persephone Q and The Visitors
Alistair McCabe comes to New York with a plan. Young, handsome, intelligent, and gay, he hopes to escape his Rust Belt poverty and give his mother a better life by pursuing a career in high finance.
But by the spring of 2016, Alistairâs plan has come undone: His fantasy banking job has eluded him, heâs mired in student debt, and in his desperation heâs gone to work for an enigmatic billionaire whose ambitions turn out to be far darker than Alistair could have imagined. By the time Alistair uncovers his employerâs secret, his life is in danger and heâs forced to go on the run.
Meanwhile, Alistairâs paramours, an older couple named Mark and Elijah, must face their own moral and financial dilemmas. Mark, nearing the end of his trust fund, takes a job with his fatherâs mobile-home empire that forces him to confront the unsavory foundations of his familyâs wealth, while Elijah, a failed painter, throws in his lot with an artist-provocateur whose latest project transforms the countryâs political chaos into a thing of alluring, amoral beauty.
As the nation hurtles toward a breaking point, Alistair, Mark, and Elijah must band together to save one another and themselves.
Propulsive, exuberant, and profoundly observed, Ways and Means is an indelible, clear-eyed investigation of class and ambition, sex and art, and politics and power in twenty-first century America.