First published 2011
Ruth Madoff sits in her Manhattan apartment as FBI agents lead her husband Bernie away in handcuffs. The world's largest Ponzi scheme has collapsed, taking billions of dollars with it. Now Ruth must confront an impossible reality: the man she loved since they were teenagers has destroyed thousands of lives, including their own. Sons Andrew and Mark reel from the discovery that their father's financial empire was built on lies. They had worked in his business, trusted his success, built their own families around his legacy. The tight family unit that once provided strength now becomes a prison. Lawyers silence them while media attacks intensify and public hatred grows. The scandal tears at every relationship, every assumption they held about their lives. Mark struggles most with the weight of his father's crimes and the family's shattered reputation. As the Madoffs face a world that assumes they must have known the truth, they must decide whether their loyalty to each other can survive the magnitude of Bernie's betrayal. This is their story of how a family implodes when built on a foundation of deception.
Genres: american-fiction, crime, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, family-secrets, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Manhattan, New York
Period: 21st Century
320 pages · Kindle Edition · Little, Brown and Company