Windfall
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
In his twenties and thirties, Ben never thought about money--more or less what you'd expect from a scholar whose specialty was the transcendentalists. But now, in his forties, trying to raise two children on a thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year salary, it's all he thinks about.
Money is a problem for Ben Lindberg. As a college professor, he's fought long and hard to keep his intellectual life--and his family life--safe and secure. But he can't afford to replace his broken-down car, can't even afford to fix it, can't even afford to move his family into a better part of Austin.
Then, one night, things change. Searching for the stray family cat, Ben finds in the basement of an abandoned feed store eight coolers filled with fifty-dollar bills. A windfall.
He knew he should leave, but he couldn't. It was the most extraordinary moment of his life and he wanted to savor it.
Ben takes the money, hides it and doesn't tell his wife. For a time, their lives improve. They move into a wonderful new house and buy a second car. Ben becomes a hero to his family. But when someone comes looking for the coolers, Ben discovers that everything comes at a cost--in this case, a cost beyond anything he could have imagined.
Windfall is the story of an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. Tautly plotted, intelligently written, and shot through with searing psychological insight, it is a novel of paranoia and betrayal, secrets and shattered ideals--a relentlessly suspenseful thriller.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For an ordinary man presented with a high-stakes, life-changing dilemma, sometimes a windfall is not a blessing but rather a complicated curse. Novelist (Money Mountain) and TV writer (Knots Landing) Magnuson demonstrates this compelling premise with the psychologically acute tale of middle-aged college professor Ben Lindberg, as he struggles to support his wife and two children on his modest university salary in Austin, Tex., where he teaches literature. One night, when Ben goes looking for the family cat, he finds himself in the basement of an abandoned feed store, where he discovers seven coolers stuffed with neatly packaged $50 bills, amounting to millions of dollars. After a few days' reflection, Ben loads the coolers into his car and takes them to a storage unit, thus setting off a chain reaction of lies and duplicity that ultimately threatens the modest but meaningful life he's built for himself and his family. His predicament: How can he use all that cash in a virtually cashless society? Dan Sweeney, a swaggering student and entrepreneur, provides a clue. Charming and malevolent, Sweeney is taking Ben's Transcendentalist class called "How to Live," but in fact it is he who leads his teacher to a furtive and suspect course of his own devising. Ben buys treats he could never have afforded--$100 gym shoes for his son, a blow-out birthday dinner for his wife. But the lies and anxiety are getting to him: he knows whoever left the money will be back. The danger in which he has put his family, the need to hide and re-hide the money and his metastasizing web of deceit "work its way into him like a slow-moving poison." Magnuson explores the risks and treacheries of greed in a perfectly rendered university setting--delightfully incongruous surroundings for Ben's perilous gamble. And he deepens the layers of clever parallels, one of which is that Ben is writing a book about how Emerson and Thoreau's relationship was destroyed by deceit. Magnuson's first novel in a decade is well worth the wait. 75,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour.
