Mentis and Ethos

Solly is a physics PhD drifting through life on raw intellect until a sudden flash of inspiration sends him careening into reinvention and he becomes a writing instructor and the unofficial guide, counselor, and bail bondsman of a Caltech undergrad house. What starts as an earnest attempt at adulthood quickly derails when Solly stumbles into the orbit of a group of transplanted Frisian toughs running an absurdly ambitious con - using a brilliant but gullible student hacker in an attempt to hijack Los Angeles's municipal databases and hold them for ransom. Before long, Solly's attempts to make sense of the situation become inseparable from his attempts to understand himself in this comedic novel of misfires, bad decisions, romance, and self-discovery.