"Deadly serious in ambition, wildly entertaining in execution, Ways and Means is a remarkably accomplished debut." -ANTHONY MARRA, New York Times bestselling author of Mercury Pictures Presents and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena "A work of enormous wit, humor, and passion that captures life in turbo capitalist America with compassion and grace." -GARY SHTEYNGART, New York Times bestselling author of Our Country Friends and Super Sad True Love Story "Totally absorbing . . . Lefferts delivers The Great Gatsby for the 21st-century: irreverent, sexy, and sharp. A major event." -JESSI JEZEWSKA STEVENS, author of The Exhibition of Persephone Q and The Visitors In this searing debut novel, a striving finance student confronts the line between ambition and greed and the disordered politics of his era 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, Alistair's plan has come undone: His fantasy banking job has eluded him, he's mired in student debt, and in his desperation he's gone to work for an enigmatic billionaire whose ambitions turn out to be far darker than any Alistair could have imagined-and now Alistair is running for his life. Meanwhile, Alistair's 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 father's mobile home empire that forces him to confront the unsavory foundations of his family's wealth, while Elijah, a failed painter, throws in his lot with an artist-provocateur whose latest project transforms the country's 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 the American 21st century.
