Fool

Self-absorbed Barnaby Griswold has to lose it all—money, homes, and family—before he gets a shot at becoming the unlikely hero of his own life.

Griswold is indisputably a fool. A well-educated, well-connected investments player on the one hand, but an entitled money-driven cretin on the other. His life changes almost overnight when he’s found to have acted slimily (but not illegally) by selling a stock short. His wife deserts him, his daughters disown him, and he loses his final and favorite home. At forty-six, disgraced and broke and lonely, Barnaby must repair his life to find redemption.

Out of print for more than a decade, Frederick G. Dillen’s comic novel about an unlikely hero is now being reissued as part of librarian and NPR commentator Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries series.