The promise of prosperity can be seductive—but what happens when the life we have worked to achieve begins to reveal its costs? In Courtney Maum’s Alan Opts Out, a successful advertising executive rejects the capitalist system he has spent his career serving, forcing his family to reconsider its own ambitions and definition of success. In Cleyvis Natera’s The Grand Paloma Resort, a luxury vacation paradise exposes the vast divide between the wealthy visitors enjoying its pleasures and the workers whose lives are shaped by their demands. And in Kayla Rae Whitaker’s Returns and Exchanges, a Kentucky family’s American Dream begins to fracture as money, status, ambition, and changing ideas about the future pull its members apart. Together, these novels sit with what we sacrifice in pursuit of success, and whether or not achieving it means getting what we actually want. Moderated by Tracy O’Neill (Woman of Interest).
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