Thomas Kohnstamm

Lake City

A Novel

“Lake City is a darkly funny and extremely relevant debut novel about American inequality and moral authority, featuring a sad–sack antihero who takes way too long to grow up. When he finally does, the results are beautiful, and the book ultimately becomes an elegy for a now–gone Seattle, and a lesson in how the place we’re from never fully lets us go.” —Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See



Hunkered down in his childhood bedroom in Seattle's worn–out Lake City neighborhood, idealistic but self–serving striver Lane Bueche licks his wounds and hatches a plot to win back his estranged Manhattanite wife.



He discovers a precarious path forward when he is contracted by a wealthy adoptive couple to seduce and sabotage a troubled birth mother from his neighborhood. Lane soon finds himself in a zero–sum game between the families as he straddles two cultures, classes, and worlds. Until finally, with the well–being of the toddler at stake, Lane must choose between wanting to do the right thing (if he could only figure out what that is) and reclaiming his idea of privilege.



"Snarky social commentary on the world of Seattle have–nots." —Kirkus Reviews