A privileged college student desperate to save his mother from a life behind bars must convince his estranged uncle to hand over his inheritance during a rollicking cross-country road trip—by the beloved author of I Leave It Up to You and Flux.
Connor Carby is a lucky guy. His mother is a Tony-winning producer; his father is an attorney with his name on the door and his face on billboards. But on his twenty-first birthday, Connor arrives at his parents’ New York penthouse and discovers his father has vanished after embezzling millions of dollars and his mother has been imprisoned as an accessory to his crimes. Turns out, Connor isn’t so lucky after all.
Connor is desperate. With nowhere to go, he visits the person who least expects him: his chaotic and crotchety uncle, Moses, the owner of Club Nine Tails, a Hell’s Kitchen gay bar with some questionably insensitive décor decisions. Despite being inseparable when Connor was young, they haven’t seen each other in a decade.
With Connor’s mother held at Rikers and his father a fugitive, the accounts frozen and the exposed frauds piling up, Moses promises to hand over his portion of “the egg,” a large inheritance from years back and Connor’s only hope of saving his family. There’s just one catch: Connor must first join him on a cross-country trip to Los Angeles, where he’s opening a new club. Then, they can talk about the money. They leave the city in a beat up, maybe-stolen Nissan Cube, embarking on a journey that takes them from motel parking lots to technicolor Dollywood, dodging questions, uncomfortable truths, and increasingly suspicious authorities along the way.
Moses is haunted by the past. Connor is suffocated by a dimming future. Their connection is bone-deep. But it might not survive the circumstances.
Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novels I Leave It Up to You and Flux, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. His work has appeared in Guernica, The Southern Review, The Rumpus, LitHub, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature, and received recognition from the Best American Short Stories anthology and a special mention from the Pushcart Prizes. He lives in New Jersey with his husband and cat.
View titles by Jinwoo Chong
A privileged college student desperate to save his mother from a life behind bars must convince his estranged uncle to hand over his inheritance during a rollicking cross-country road trip—by the beloved author of I Leave It Up to You and Flux.
Connor Carby is a lucky guy. His mother is a Tony-winning producer; his father is an attorney with his name on the door and his face on billboards. But on his twenty-first birthday, Connor arrives at his parents’ New York penthouse and discovers his father has vanished after embezzling millions of dollars and his mother has been imprisoned as an accessory to his crimes. Turns out, Connor isn’t so lucky after all.
Connor is desperate. With nowhere to go, he visits the person who least expects him: his chaotic and crotchety uncle, Moses, the owner of Club Nine Tails, a Hell’s Kitchen gay bar with some questionably insensitive décor decisions. Despite being inseparable when Connor was young, they haven’t seen each other in a decade.
With Connor’s mother held at Rikers and his father a fugitive, the accounts frozen and the exposed frauds piling up, Moses promises to hand over his portion of “the egg,” a large inheritance from years back and Connor’s only hope of saving his family. There’s just one catch: Connor must first join him on a cross-country trip to Los Angeles, where he’s opening a new club. Then, they can talk about the money. They leave the city in a beat up, maybe-stolen Nissan Cube, embarking on a journey that takes them from motel parking lots to technicolor Dollywood, dodging questions, uncomfortable truths, and increasingly suspicious authorities along the way.
Moses is haunted by the past. Connor is suffocated by a dimming future. Their connection is bone-deep. But it might not survive the circumstances.
Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novels I Leave It Up to You and Flux, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. His work has appeared in Guernica, The Southern Review, The Rumpus, LitHub, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature, and received recognition from the Best American Short Stories anthology and a special mention from the Pushcart Prizes. He lives in New Jersey with his husband and cat.
View titles by Jinwoo Chong
