Review by Booklist Review
Andre Ross has escaped a life of crime in the 'inner-city' and now works at a top political consulting firm in Washington, DC, thanks to Fiona Fitzpatrick, the hard-nosed Irish Catholic grande dame who took him under her wing. However, his use of heavy-handed campaign tactics causes trouble, so, on top of a recent breakup, he must now accept his punishment: an assignment in rural South Carolina, where being African American is an issue, with one assistant, Brendan, Fiona's grandson. They are tasked with using dark money to divest Carthage County of its precious public lands which they will then sell to a mining company. As Andre and Brendan exploit the prejudices of the conservative electorate, Wright explores the themes of loyalty, perception versus reality, corruption, and racism, balancing absurd situations and deep-seated issues with wry, self-deprecating humor. For his part, Andre essentially becomes the role he's paid to play, but then throws it all away, as if to say, I'm keeping my soul after all. Wright has created a sharply contemporary Faustian tragicomedy with parallels to the TV series Scandal.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Wright explores the fraught intersection of business and politics in his promising and caustic debut. Beginning with a series of epigraphs juxtaposing Supreme Court justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia's opinions on Citizens United with Notorious B.I.G.'s rap song "Mo Money Mo Problems," Wright chronicles the labors of Andre "Dre" Ross, a K Street political consultant who receives a second chance after running an ill-advised Machiavellian play that backfires on his firm. Assisted by his mentor's wide-eyed 20-something grandson Brendan Fitzpatrick, Dre hopes to redeem himself by accepting a "clandestine grassroots dark-money campaign" to elect a new manager of Carthage County, S.C., who will be more likely to comply with the firm's client, a mining company whose plans include "pumping millions of gallons of cyanide deep into the earth." Wright conjures a cast of believable blue-collar locals to imagine how a local election can be manipulated through a carefully orchestrated process that includes the grooming of straw men, the crafting of rhetoric to distort issues, and the channeling of discord and dissatisfaction among the electorate to turn a campaign dirty, dangerous--and effective. Pungent with dark humor and cynicism, Wright's nuanced portrait shows how the campaign not only pulls apart the town but threatens to drive a wedge between Dre's career ambitions and his humanity. This incisive satire introduces an sharp new voice. (Apr.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT Andre Ross is an African American ex-con-turned-political consultant for a Washington firm specializing in running dark money-funded campaigns for corporate clients. Overly aggressive tactics on his last assignment, which caused the initiative to fail, have put him on the outs with the firm's founder and his former mentor, and he is given one last chance to redeem himself, running a small-time campaign in rural South Carolina to convince the local population to sell their public lands to mining interests. With a miniscule budget and the founder's grandson as his only assistant, he recruits a local couple, good-ole-boy Tyler Lee and his devout wife, Chalene, to be the spokespeople for the initiative. They amass the necessary signatures to get the initiative on the ballot and build support among their neighbors while Andre strategizes a campaign to disguise a corporate land grab as a fight for faith, freedom, and family. VERDICT This is an archly comic and ultimately chilling political novel on the effects of the dark money unleashed by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision on the American political soul as well as on the souls of individuals. Thoughtful, sharp-edged fare for the upcoming election year. [See Prepub Alert, 10/14/19.]--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This dark comedy about dark money confirms one's worst suspicions about the political process while constantly confounding one's presumptions about human behavior.Once an up-and-coming operative for a prestigious K Street political consulting firm, Andre "Dre" Ross now finds himself on thin ice for having gone overboard on a gubernatorial campaign. His boss offers him what seems to be one last chance for advancement: the opportunity to supervise a ballot initiative that would enable a metals conglomerate to mine gold from a thousand-acre Appalachian rainforest in Carthage County, South Carolina, that local officials refuse to sell. Making the county's predominantly white and mostly conservative electorate willing to part with such fertile land shouldn't require much more than ramping up anti-government, don't-tread-on-me emotions. But because Dre is African American and has a criminal record in his youthful past, he may be the least likely public face to put before presumptive voters. So he assembles a team co-led by a strapping 20-something Irish American assistant named Brendan and a lead spokesman named Tyler Lee, who owns a bar called the Gray Wolf and flies both the American and Confederate flags. An even bigger asset to the campaign turns out to be Tyler's pregnant, God-fearing wife, Chalene, whose fragile, self-effacing demeanor belies her natural magnetism as a public speaker. Pulling strings on this movement takes an emotional toll on Dre, who is capable of orchestrating all manner of dirty tricks to fulfill his client's mandate. Yet he is pummeled by so much self-loathing that he alienates everybody on his team with the possible exception of Chalene, the least cynical person in the novel. "Aren't elections about getting people to like you?" she asks Dre at one point. "That's a common misconception," he replies. "Elections are about getting voters to hate others." That this debut novel is written by an attorney whose specialties include criminal justice and election law adds doleful, acerbic authenticity to his scenario. Yet there is also alertness to the possibility of redemption and change even in the most polarizing of situations.Politics can be cruel and heartbreakingand even more complicated than it seems. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
