ABOUT
THE BOOK

Richard Power’s last novel, Galatea 2.2, was hailed as “dazzling….a cerebral thriller that’s both intellectually engaging and emotionally compelling, a lively tour de force” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). In Gain, he attempts nothing less than a history of America as told through the tale of a singular enterprise. When three Boston merchant brothers coax the secret of fine soapmaking from an Irish immigrant, they set in motion a chain of events that will spin a family cottage soap works into a multinational consumer-goods giant by the millennium’s end. Set against this sweeping, 170-year rise of the Clare Soap and Chemical Company is the contemporary story of Laura Bodey, a real-estate broker. Laura, her two teenage children, and her ex- husband all live in Lacewood, Illinois, a place that owes its very existence to the regional Clare factories that have nursed the town from nothing. The Clare Agricultural Division now sponsors every aspect of Lacewood, from the corn boil to the college library. But when a cyst on Laura’s ovary turns malignant and the local industry is implicated, the insignificant individual and the corporate behemoth collide, forever changing the shape of American life. A brilliant novel that plumbs the arcane worlds of manufacturing and product development, human ingenuity and survival, Gain is at once a celebration of the American experiment and an exploration of the cost of unbridled growth.