On the first page of Purchasing Power, a man dressed for an important meeting lies dead on a busy residential street in Washington. A few years earlier, Will Bradley arrives from Ohio to work for a U.S. congressman whose career is about to take off. In the right place at the right time, the congressman places Will in a powerful lobbying firm, where he trades favors and steers client money to feed the relentless campaign fundraising on Capitol Hill. In the wartime fever years just after 9/11, Will and the congressman tap into the lucrative business of peddling foreign influence in Washington. They provide a unique weapon to ambitious foreign potentates, overthrowing monarchs and eliminating political opponents with a push from the Washington power centers assembling new allies in the "global war on terror." Meanwhile, two women complicate Will's life, both driven by his past betrayals. His wife, Lil, is descending into mental illness and increasingly violent behaviors, haunted by guilt from her family's notorious past. Catherine, a competing lobbyist and former lover from Will's early days in Washington, is determined to destroy Will's latest client, a faded prince fighting for independence in a former Soviet state. Set against the backdrop of America's rage and wars of retribution, Purchasing Power is a novel about vengeance and its dark paths.
