Confidence
Best friends (and occasional lovers) Ezra and Orson are teetering on top of the world after founding a company that promises instant enlightenment in this “propulsive, cheeky, eat-the-rich page-turner” about scams, schemes, and the absurdity of the American Dream.
At seventeen, Ezra Green doesn’t have a lot going on for him: he’s shorter than average, snaggle-toothed, internet-addicted, and halfway to being legally blind. He’s also on his way to Last Chance Camp, the final stop before juvie.
But Ezra’s summer at Last Chance turns life-changing when he meets Orson, brilliant and Adonis-like with a mind for hustling. Together, the two embark upon what promises to be a fruitful career of scam artistry. But things start to spin wildly out of control when they try to pull off their biggest scam yet—Nulife, a corporation that promises its consumers a lifetime of bliss.
“Propulsive” and “laugh-out-loud funny," with the suspense of The Talented Mr. Ripley, the decadence of The Great Gatsby, and the wit of Succession, Confidence is a story for anyone who knows that the American Dream is just another pyramid scheme.
Rafael Frumkin
Rafael Frumkin is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Medill School of Journalism. He is the author of the novels The Comedown and Confidence and the short story collection Bugsy. His fiction, nonfiction, and criticism have appeared in Granta, Guernica, Hazlitt, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others. He is a professor of creative writing at Southern Illinois University.