These years of happy tutorship deteriorate when Leopold becomes obsessed with an esoteric theology that he forces Helen to study. From a young age, the precocious Helen is tutored by her intellectual father, Leopold, in a range of subjects. Prior to meeting Rask, they flee the ignominy of falling from wealth by undertaking a years-long tour of Europe. Helen comes from an old-money New York family whose fortune is all but exhausted. Rask marries Helen Brevoort, with whom he shares a similarly reserved personality. Though he adopts the trappings of the wealthy financier, Rask’s fascination remains in investment, not luxury. His prescient trades quickly garner him a reputation as an investing savant. Rask sells his inherited business and properties and starts an investment firm on Wall Street. After he profits from the crash of 1893, he discovers his first and only passion: investing. When he’s orphaned at 18, he inherits his father’s fortune and business. In Bonds, Rask is presented as an asocial, dispassionate boy born into a long line of successful tobacco traders. Mildred Bevel is a music lover and philanthropist who dies at a young age from cancer. Andrew Bevel is an investing savant who becomes the richest man in the world by shorting the stock market crash of 1929. Vanner bases the Rasks on Andrew and Mildred Bevel, who appear in the following three books in Trust. Bonds follows the investor Benjamin Rask and his wife, Helen.

The first book in Trust is a novel within a novel, a bestselling roman à clef titled Bonds, by Harold Vanner. This guide uses the 2022 Riverhead Books paperback edition. The compounding narratives explore the power of wealth, the artifice of the financial system, and the gender politics inherent in both. Primarily about a financier, Andrew Bevel-who becomes the richest man in the world by shorting the stock market crash of 1929- Trust contains four distinct books in which different characters provide conflicting accounts of the financier and his wife.

Trust by diaz