An unnamed male narrator has hit the road. Rid of any possible identifiers, his possessions amount to $168,548 in cash stashed in an envelope under his car seat. Vigilantly avoiding security cameras, he drives until he hits a city where his past is unlikely to track him down, and finds a room to rent from a less-than-stable landlady whose need for money outweighs her desire to ask questions. He seems to have escaped his former self. But can he? In a story that moves with swift dark humor and insight, Jonathan Dee takes us through his narrator’s attempt to disavow his former life of privilege and enter a blameless new existence.

Mark Firth is a contractor and home restorer in Howland, Massachusetts, who feels opportunity passing his family by. After being swindled by a financial advisor, what future can Mark promise his wife and their young daughter? He finds himself envying the wealthy weekenders in his community whose houses sit empty all winter. Philip Hadi used to be one of these people. But in the nervous days after 9/11, he flees New York and hires Mark to turn his Howland home into a year-round “secure location” from which he can manage billions of dollars of other people’s money. The collision of these two men’s very different worlds --- rural vs. urban, middle class vs. wealthy --- is the engine of Jonathan Dee’s powerful novel.

Once a privileged and loving couple, the Armsteads have now reached a breaking point --- and everything they have built together unravels, swiftly and spectacularly. As she is confronted with the biggest case of her career, the fallout from her marriage, and her daughter’s increasingly distant behavior, Helen must face the limits of accountability and her own capacity for forgiveness.