This is a virtual event on Zoom hosted by Powerhouse at IC.
Vlautin’s latest introduces us to Lynette—30 years old, exhausted, struggling with bad credit—as it explores the impact of the trickle-down greed and opportunism of gentrification on ordinary lives. Lynette has worked multiple jobs for three years (one of them illegal) to cover the $80,000 down payment on the rental house she shares with her mother and disabled brother. It’s the only home they’ve known, the only house they can afford, and her mother can cover the rest of the cost through a loan. But a week before they are set to sign the loan papers, her mother gets cold feet and reneges on her promise, pushing Lynette to her limits to find the money they need.
Set over two days and two nights, THE NIGHT ALWAYS COMES follows Lynette’s frantic search across the city, encountering pervasive greed, money old and new, those who are benefiting and those left behind by a city in boom. Desperate for help that doesn’t come, she makes a dangerous choice that sets her on a precarious, frenzied spiral.
Dubbed by Publishers Weekly as “stunning” and “heartbreaking,” the novel asks: What is the price of gentrification, and how far are we prepared to go for the American dream?
