When Egypt Went Broke: A Novel

The town of Egypt, Maine, is drowning in debt, and Tasper Britt, the ruthless moneylender known as Phay-ray-oh behind his back, holds most of its suffering residents by the purse strings. A widower fresh from burying his wife, Britt sees opportunity in catastrophe: the town's desperation might finally buy him the political honors and social prestige that have always eluded him. He means to rise, and he means to do it with Vona Harnden, the young woman behind his bank's counter, at his side. But Britt's brother Usial and the mysterious Prophet Elias have arrived to challenge his dominion, and Egypt's poverty has bred a fury that no moneylender can ultimately outrun. Holman Day's 1921 novel is a savage, wit-sharp portrait of small-town American greed and ambition, where economic ruin becomes a biblical plague and one man's hunger for respectability collides with the lives he's crushed beneath him. It endures because it captures a moment when the old rural order was collapsing, and the men who profited from others' debt were about to learn that debts always come due.