Borrowed Fortune

Aria and Daniel are two people from opposite ends of an old American divide. She is the daughter of a Manhattan family whose name appears on building plaques and donor walls. He is a barista in Queens with ninety-three dollars in his checking account and a borrowed coat. They meet, as people meet now, through a screen, and they fall in love before either of them has had the chance to be properly categorized by the other. Then the world arrives, as the world always arrives, and brings with it the small and large facts that the two of them have not yet had the courage to say out loud. What follows is, I hope, a story about more than wealth and disguise. It is a story about the parents we inherit and the parents we eventually become. It is a story about the difference between a lie and a silence, and about why the silence, in the end, can be just as expensive. It is a story about the long, patient work of choosing the same person twice, and then a thousand times, even on the days when it would be easier to choose otherwise. If you have ever loved someone you were afraid you did not deserve, this book is for you. If you have ever been loved by someone who did not, at first, see you whole, this book is also for you. And if you are simply here because you wanted a story about two people on a bench in the rain, I promise we will get there. Thank you for opening the book.