Two lifelong friends, occasional lovers, and constant conmen find themselves on top of the world after founding a company that promises instant enlightenment to its users in this thrilling, brainy caper about scams, schemes, and the absurdity of the American Dream. At seventeen, Ezra Green doesn’t have a lot going for him. He is shorter than average, gap-toothed, internet-addicted, and halfway to being legally blind. He’s also on his way to Last Chance Camp, the final stop before juvie. Ezra's summer at Last Chance turns life-changing when he meets Orson, brilliant and Adonis-like, with a mind for hustling. Together, the two embark upon what promises to be a fruitful career of scam artistry. But when they try to pull off their biggest scam yet—NuLife, a corporation that promises its consumers a lifetime of bliss—things start to spin wildly out of control. Searing and charming, Confidence is a story for anyone who knows that the American Dream is just another pyramid scheme.
Author
Rafael Frumkin's first novel, THE COMEDOWN, was published by Henry Holt in 2018. His second novel, CONFIDENCE, is forthcoming from Simon and Schuster in February 2023. His collection of short stories, BUGSY, is slated to hit shelves in early 2024. He has written for the Washington Post, the Paris Review, Granta, Guernica, Hazlitt, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among other places. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Medill School of Journalism, he lives in Carbondale, IL, where he teaches fiction and nonfiction writing at Southern Illinois University.
