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The price of service to wealth and power is exposed when a father’s limits are tested on an ultrarich family’s remote island
Nick, in the wake of a failed marriage, settles for the relative ease of a well-paid job captaining a luxury yacht, but it leaves little time for his seven-year-old daughter Natalie. In a stroke of good fortune, he is offered a mysterious yet lucrative opportunity that allows Natalie to tag along, and they are soon flying across the globe in a private jet. The workload proves light and they are encouraged to enjoy the sun, surf, and island amenities—but they must wear customized digital glasses that shield the identities of his employers. When Natalie is invited to play with their children and her treasured red dress disappears, Nick discovers that everything is not as it seems, and what began as a grand adventure warps into an unsettling mirage.
An exploration of extreme privilege, global inequality, and the power of emerging technology, The Red Dress is also an eloquent story about our search for connection that raises essential questions about what we owe to ourselves and those we love.
Praise for The Red Dress
New York Times “Novels Everyone Will Be Talking About” selection
“Riveting. . . . A suspense-filled, character-driven novel about a fraught father-daughter relationship and the father’s work to redefine himself.” —Foreword Reviews (starred review)
“Frank Huyler is the rare writer who combines a soaring imagination with gorgeous prose and a lapidary social vision. I loved The Red Dress, a beautifully narrated story of a man and his daughter colliding with our shared ‘future’—already too present. The winner-take-all society devours beauty and fragility wherever it finds it, even in the form of a seven-year-old’s cherished red dress.” —Alex Beam, author of Gracefully Insane and Broken Glass
“The Red Dress is one of the very best novels I’ve read in recent years. It’s all here—the complications of love, work, family, and age brought to bear in the struggle of a good man trying to make a decent life for himself and his young daughter. In the increasingly surreal island paradise where Nick and Natalie find themselves, they encounter not just the weirdness and whims of the ultrarich, but the threat this kind of mind-boggling wealth poses for the rest of us. Frank Huyler is a novelist of the first rank, and The Red Dress had me firmly in its grip from start to finish.” —Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Rasputin Swims the Potomac
Select Praise for Frank Huyler
“One reads Huyler as if under a spell. The man is a magician.” —Paul Auster
“In terms of literature and life, this is the real thing.” —Rachel Cusk, Evening Standard
“[Huyler shows] the world as it is, lovely and disturbing all at once.” —Atul Gawande
“A gifted writer and doctor.” —Abraham Verghese
“A writer who makes every word count.” —Times Literary Supplement
“[Huyler] is an E.R. physician as well as a poet, and his work shows the economy and sharp attention that both jobs demand.” —New Yorker
“At times [Huyler’s] style owes something to the rapturous economy of Denis Johnson. . . . [His] work is implicitly political . . . but maintains an elemental tone.” —Harper’s Magazine
“The intimate tone of Huyler’s elegiac voice invites us to . . . think again about the things we think we know.” —New York Times Book Review
“Readers who enjoy the essays of Abraham Verghese and Atul Gawande will find Huyler takes a similar tack in fictional form.” —Publishers Weekly
“[Huyler] captures life, death, the decisions that change our lives, violence, and grace—all at once.” —Book Riot
“Huyler’s spare, meticulous prose passes light through his characters like an X-ray.” —Bookreporter
Frank Huyler is the author of three novels, including The Red Dress, and two books about his work as an emergency physician: The Blood of Strangers, considered a classic of medical writing, and White Hot Light, a finalist for the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature. His books have been widely translated, and his poems, essays, and opinion pieces have appeared in many publications, including the Atlantic, American Scholar, Guardian, New York Daily News, Vice, and Washington Post. Huyler practices medicine in Albuquerque, New Mexico.