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In this Pygmalion tale of a novelist turned bond trader, Martha McPhee brings to life the greed and riotous wealth of New York during the heady days of the second gilded age. India Palmer, living the cash-strapped existence of the writer, is visiting wealthy friends in Maine when a yellow biplane swoops down from the clear blue sky to bring a stranger into her life who will change everything. The stranger is Win Johns, a swaggering and intellectually bored trader of mortgage-backed securities. Charmed by India's intelligence, humor, and inquisitive nature, and aware of her near-desperate financial situation, Win poses a proposition: "Give me eighteen months and I'll make you a world-class bond trader." Shedding her artist's life with surprising ease, India embarks on a raucous ride to the top of the income chain, leveraging herself with crumbling real estate, never once looking back…or does she? With a light-handed irony that is by turns as measured as Claire Messud's and as biting as Tom Wolfe's, Martha McPhee tells the classic American story of people reinventing themselves, unaware of the price they must pay for their transformation.
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Reviews
"I can't remember the last time I couldn't put a book down. I read Dear Money in cars, in waiting rooms, even at a rest stop on the turnpike. I read whole passages out loud to my husband. Martha McPhee is a wickedly good social observer, a writer of beautiful, lyrical prose, and a consummate storyteller. This is a very smart novel that unpacks small surprises and pleasures on every single page."
Dani Shapiro, author of Black & White
"Martha McPhee writes with verve and uncanny insight about those recent, heady dreams of easy wealth. This New York Pygmalian story takes us beyond what we thought we knew about money and art and all their precarious alliances, in an adventure that recreates the city's temptations, both material and idealistic. Dear Money is conceived with such cutting precision and grace, it will make readers thi
Rene Steinke, author of Holy Skirts
"Wouldn't be so funny if it didnt ring so true…India continues to engage the reader's empathy, even affection, as she forsakes literary high-mindedness for filthy lucre."
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)