The Money Cure by Linda Peer

SPSFC 2023

What if avarice after billionaire-ism is just a subset of ordinary hoarding disorder? What if someone discovered a way to repair that? Who would benefit? Who would oppose such a cure, and how aggressively? The Money Cure is a comic romantic adventure set in the near future, when a housing crisis forces working people, from retail employees to programmers, to live in illegal housing called underhousing. Jemma is a beautiful loner with aspirations as a graphic novelist. She wants to make money to buy the time she needs to create a work of art. Employed in a menial job at a spa for the ultra-wealthy, her real ambition is to delight readers. Jemma also wants to acquire enough money, cash, assets, or whatever, to move out of her van, parked in underhousing. Financially challenged and stuck in a dead end job, Jemma devises an only slightly illegal plan to fix her money problem. Oz Vasquez is a sociable, outgoing biologist. He is one of a group of scientists who believe the solution to the deepening housing crisis is a change in how people, especially billionaires, regard the acquisition of vast hoards of money. The scientists believe the ultra-wealthy behave as crudely and irrationally as dragons sitting on hoards of gold in fairy tales. They are searching for a cure for what they call the dread moneypox. If they find such a cure, some of them intend to administer it to the ultra-wealthy by any means necessary. When Jemma and Oz meet, each secretly hopes to use the other to advance their scheme. Then they fall in love. Their intentions toward each other change, but their plans are already in motion. Their situation is complicated when they become entangled with a group of minor criminals called the Candy Mommies and Daddies. The Candies are masters of the misdemeanor, who sometimes step over the line into felony. Will either Jemma or Oz, or both, succeed? Will they betray each other, or help each other? Will their love survive their ambitions?