Rich Boy — Sharon Pomerantz

Ten years in the making, Sharon Pomerantz's debut novel is a sweeping tale of class, sexual rebellion, money, and love. It chronicles four decades in an American century through the eyes of one ceaseless dreamer...

Robert Vishniak is the favored son of Oxford Circle, a working-class Jewish neighborhood in 1970s Philadelphia. Handsome, charming, and clever, he employs his considerable gifts to move ever higher on his social ladder. In his decades-spanning journey of self-invention, Robert glides from hardscrabble beginnings to the elite universities of New England. With growing ambition, he ensconces himself among scions of unimagined wealth and influence, building a future that he believes will eclipse his humble past. Ultimately, he ends himself in the highest circle, of Manhattan society at the heart of the heady Reagan boom.

But as so often is the case, it takes but a single, fleeting occurrence to change a life. And in Robert's case, it threatens to undermine his achievements and unravel his carefully constructed identity.