A Year in New York

A thousand people move to New York City everyday; this is a story of two: a veteran, just finished with college, who journeys from the Midwest to save coquettish Erica from a battered women’s shelter in New York. The story follows them over the year the economy crashed as they try to find their place in a city with 66,000 residents per square mile and the highest cost of living in the U.S. The author turns the American Dream on its head and mocks the platitudes of romantic love while satirizing perceptions of work ethic, success and the social pretensions of the newly rich. You’ve come to New York with $120 and a duffel bag of clothes. You don’t know anyone and you have nowhere to go. What would you do?