A modern coming-of-age novel about a boy's struggle for survival in a lush and corrupting world that each day grows more seductive and more lethal.

New York's Lower East Side, 1978. Fifteen-year-old Finn Earl's mother, Liz, is a thirty-two-year-old masseuse with a taste for cocaine. When Liz's habit reaches its breaking point, she seeks sanctuary with one of her clients, aging billionaire Ogden C. Osborne. Less than twenty-four hours later, she and Finn have been dropped into a world more savage than anything in National Geographic, more cutthroat than anything New York's grimy downtown streets have to offer-the exclusive rural community of Vlyvalle, New Jersey.

In this golden playground for the super-rich, they find a new life and new friends amongst the decadent and beautiful denizens of Osborne's empire. Finn falls in love and grows up fast. He's living a twisted approximation of the American dream-and for a moment everything he wants is there for the taking.

But in Vlyvalle, social climbing is a blood sport. Even on what should be the happiest night of Finn's life-on an island in the middle of Osborne's private lake, naked and high with Osborne's bewitching granddaughter Maya-someone is watching him from the depths of the forest...and laughing. Soon, Finn is tangled in a web of secrets and betrayals so bizarre and so dangerous that getting out starts to look even harder than getting in.