The Losing Team

A bold, profound, kaleidoscopic novel about a crime family’s struggle for power in a rapacious new American era 1867: Wash Loomis returns from the blazing West to the winter slush of Utica, New York, epicenter of his infamous family’s sprawling web of swindlers and counterfeiters. Here everyone—snake oil salesman or sex worker, journalist or preacher—has a hustle, but these days even the most audacious scam is dwarfed by the unchecked venality of the railroads and banks. As Wash and his mother, Rhoda, battle for control of their empire across a tumultuous decade, the lusty, contentious Loomises and their enemies, lovers, and conspirators find themselves at both the mercy and the cutting edge of a ruthless new capitalist order. Freewheeling and sexy, suspenseful and intensely subversive, The Losing Team is a tragicomedy of small cons and big lies that introduces an unforgettable new voice with the power and range—by turns lyrical, absurd, furious, and elegiac—to make the past resound unforgettably into the present.