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Leapers
When Rick Waverly leaves a Midwest steel town to become a writer for American Prosperity magazine in the big city, he fools himself into believing he's escaped his blue-collar roots. For twenty years, he works at the magazine devoted to idolizing the extreme rich--CEOs, CFOs, hedge fund managers. Leapers is about Rick's discoveries concerning money and position as he researches his final story for the magazine to uncover the secrets of C. Douglas Fugassi, a reclusive billionaire.
Rick is exhausted, worn down by his career and life in the city. He’d long shunned the city’s most unpleasant aspects. But they materialize in the form of Soog, a grizzled homeless man who sets up camp in a shabby park below his window.
Rick digs into the Fugassi assignment, while at the same time he gets to know Soog, who reminds him of his roots. Rick bounces between the world of the homeless man and the wealthy people connected to the missing billionaire. Rick makes love to a woman with mysterious ties to the 11th richest person in America, and he has other breaks that lead him to close in on his quarry.
Leapers is a novella for the era of Occupy Wall Street. It continues the spirit of writers such as John Steinbeck and John O'Hara who were producing social novels in the 1930s.
Rick is exhausted, worn down by his career and life in the city. He’d long shunned the city’s most unpleasant aspects. But they materialize in the form of Soog, a grizzled homeless man who sets up camp in a shabby park below his window.
Rick digs into the Fugassi assignment, while at the same time he gets to know Soog, who reminds him of his roots. Rick bounces between the world of the homeless man and the wealthy people connected to the missing billionaire. Rick makes love to a woman with mysterious ties to the 11th richest person in America, and he has other breaks that lead him to close in on his quarry.
Leapers is a novella for the era of Occupy Wall Street. It continues the spirit of writers such as John Steinbeck and John O'Hara who were producing social novels in the 1930s.
125 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 5, 2012
2 people are currently reading
12 people want to read
About the author
Dale Maharidge
24 books120 followersI'm a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. I've published ten books, including And Their Children After Them, which won the 1990 non-fiction Pulitzer Prize. The most recent is Bringing Mulligan Home/The Other Side of the Good War (PublicAffairs). Before that I released the paperback edition of Someplace Like America/ Tales from the New Great Depression(University of California Press), with a foreword by Bruce Springsteen.
My books are all thematically connected, I believe, rooted in my curiosity about America and who we are as a people. I've documented the economic crisis since the 1980s. For working people, there is no other way to describe it. If you want, check out the afterword I wrote for the paperback of Someplace Like America--I reported in Detroit for it and I found some very interesting things there that raises questions about where we are going as a country.
I spent the first 15 years of my career as a newspaperman, working in Cleveland and Sacramento. I also taught at Stanford University for 10 years, in the Department of Communication.
My books are all thematically connected, I believe, rooted in my curiosity about America and who we are as a people. I've documented the economic crisis since the 1980s. For working people, there is no other way to describe it. If you want, check out the afterword I wrote for the paperback of Someplace Like America--I reported in Detroit for it and I found some very interesting things there that raises questions about where we are going as a country.
I spent the first 15 years of my career as a newspaperman, working in Cleveland and Sacramento. I also taught at Stanford University for 10 years, in the Department of Communication.
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December 26, 2012
Dale Maharidge, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and non-fiction, investigative author, shows he can excel at fiction. Maharidge is best known for his partnership with photographer Michael Williamson, a two-time Pulitzer winner. Their first collaboration,following up on the work of James Agee and photographer Walker Evans in "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," won a non-fiction Pulitzer.
In "Leapers," Maharidge draws on the partners' experience traveling and living among the poor, most recently those who fell off the economic ladder in "Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression".
Nothing in Maharidge's writing in "Leapers" gets in the way of the story. Journalist Rick Waverly is obsessed with a growing belief that a homeless man camped in an alcove nakedly visible from Waverly's apartment window may be a missing, reclusive billionaire who made his fortune as a vulture capitalist. The report's digging takes him to the most elite Manhattan social circles and to the hidden world of eternally traveling hobos.
In "Leapers," Maharidge draws on the partners' experience traveling and living among the poor, most recently those who fell off the economic ladder in "Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression".
Nothing in Maharidge's writing in "Leapers" gets in the way of the story. Journalist Rick Waverly is obsessed with a growing belief that a homeless man camped in an alcove nakedly visible from Waverly's apartment window may be a missing, reclusive billionaire who made his fortune as a vulture capitalist. The report's digging takes him to the most elite Manhattan social circles and to the hidden world of eternally traveling hobos.
Displaying 1 of 1 review