Ruin: A Novel of Flyfishing in Bankruptcy

Summary

Frank is another dreamer whose life is suddenly burned to the ground. More a disillusioned literature PhD than an experienced financier, he had naively agreed to join his wife's inheritance with his own personal guarantee of a college friend's private equity partnership debt.

­The business implosion and subsequent bankruptcy took all their assets. Francy, an orphaned European heiress, now finds herself homeless, still married to pleasant, witty Frank—who had failed to protect them from disaster.

­The couple flees Manhattan to live at a desolate non-working Hudson Valley farm. Frank starts an artisanal brewery with a charismatic new eccentric friend. And, central to the heart of the story, he takes up fly fishing.

Frank's perceptions on the water are fresh and acute, sometimes colored by his memory of the words of famous writers, now painfully ironic in his life's new context.

And throughout, there is Francy's story. Now in exile, she re-approaches painting with new and darkly complex emotional energy. Her work's enigmatic intensity attracts a wealthy neighbor who offers Francy a show in his Manhattan gallery and that attracts a great deal of trouble indeed.