THE LEADING INDICATORS

Tom Perotta meets David Brooks in a powerful modern parable about one American family's fall from grace during and after the recession.

Margo and Tom Helot have the perfect life. They inhabit a fully redecorated home situated in the peaceful, leafy suburb of a major city. Their family is rounded out by two delightful children well on their way to achieving academic success. Everything has turned out more or less as they'd hoped and expected it would. Until, that is, it all comes crashing down around them when Tom's boss reveals that their company is bankrupt. Forced into the job market just as the Dow plummets and unemployment starts to spike, Tom finds himself buffeted by the winds of misfortune, bouncing from one failing company to the next and towing his family into a maelstrom of debt and financial insecurity. With nowhere else to turn, he and Margo must make the ultimate choice to save their family's future. Though at first glance the novel may also seem potentially too American, the story also offers foreign readers a perspective on the American – and indeed global - economy that is very compelling – if only as a cautionary tale of how far American consumerism can take us. THE LEADING INDICATORS is a slim novel but it certainly packs a punch. Gregg Easterbrook is the author of seven books, including the novels This Magic Moment and The Here and Now. He is a contributing editor to The Atlantic, for which he has written more than a dozen cover stories, and The New Republic. His articles have appeared in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times, as well as on the covers of Newsweek and Time. He lives near Washington, D.C., with his wife and three children.