Cecily Darden, called "Alice" by her shrink, is drawn into the dangerous world of a husband, Thomas Limone, who suddenly disappeared a decade earlier. Somehow an unexpected inheritance from Thomas' father brings her to a Brooklyn neighborhood facing gentrification. She finds herself a target for everyone with a claim on a certainly illegal treasure trove that the IRS is also looking for. Whether or not she is or isn't a shill in a long con, an involvement that begins with her relationship with Thomas, known as "Trip" in the New Utrecht Avenue neighborhood is something that Angelo Bari, the "Prince" of the neighborhood and fascinated by Alice, cannot decide.
The New Pompey Bar & Restaurant under the El on New Utrecht Avenue, a not quite gone Italian-American neighborhood ruled by false whiffs of the Mafia, is facing the slow encroachment of gentrification, a white, wealthy invasion already successful in Black and Latinx neighborhoods such as Bedford-Stuyvesant, Williamsburg, Clinton Hill, Park Slope and Gowanus, and Crown Heights North. It's an invasion that the characters, caught in personal turmoil, yearning, resentment, humiliation and drink don't attend. And as Synthetic Life of the algorithm floods the consciousness of the country, it's full analog here, such minds going extinct like the purple warbler.
Collapsing minds, arcane financial looting, gold dust in bags at the bottom of Jamaica Bay, moguls of plutarchy and a hero who can't find the game he is supposed to win share only a readiness to run