"No doubt you have heard the age-old legend of the Mother Vein of Gold, which appears and vanishes, now and again, in this corner of the world. Superstition regarding this great original vein of gold is found wherever men seek the precious metal. The feverish Spaniards called this phantom lode the Madre d'Oro, or "Mother of Gold." Now it is located in Mexico, now in India or Peru, California or Australia. Tradition says that Montezuma got his gold from this great vein, which lay in a secret valley whose where-abouts was jealously guarded by three priests of the war tribe, sole possessors of the knowledge. Any intruder who by chance or design looked down into this valley was smitten absolutely blind. Tradition among the successors of the Aztecs says that when Montezuma passed, the Madre d'Oro sank back again into the earth, and has been seen no more. Men still follow the phantom vein. Those who see it, even in their dreams, still are smitten blind." -Preface

A sparkling debut that is “full of ambition and grit” (Emma Straub), Stephanie Clifford's Everybody Rise is a story about identity and loss, and how sometimes we have to lose everything to find our way back to who we really are. “Finally, a novel that admits ‘making it’ isn't just a makeover away.” -Vanity Fair Twenty-six-year-old Evelyn Beegan intended to free herself from the influence of her social-climbing mother, who propelled her through prep school and onto New York’s stately Upper East Side. Evelyn has long felt like an outsider to her privileged peers, but when she lands a job at a social-network startup aimed at the elite, she has no choice but to infiltrate their world. Soon she finds herself navigating the promised land of Adirondack camps, Hamptons beach houses, and, of course, the island of Manhattan itself. Intoxicated by the wealth, access, and influence of her new set, Evelyn can’t help but try to pass as old money herself. But when the lies become more tangled, she grasps with increasing desperation as the ground beneath her begins to give way. Chosen as one of Summer's Best Books by People Magazine Featured in Time Magazine's Summer Reading Entertainment Weekly's Summer Must List Good Housekeeping Beach Reads Feature