Summary

The prologue of The Son of Good Fortune opens with Maxima sitting in the dark before her computer, diligently preparing. She cleans her nails, stretches, applies lipstick, checks her teeth, and appears to say a prayer in the moments leading up to her turning on her webcam. The third-person narrator notes that Maxima “could easily pass for thirty but is somewhere in her fifties,” and that “her true age, she swears, is a mystery, even to herself” (2).

Once the camera is on, a man appears onscreen and addresses Maxima in affectionate and familiar terms. He calls her “my love” and shares intimate details of his lonely, tumultuous personal life before confessing to Maxima that he might be falling in love with her. We learn that the man, a wealthy, “twice-divorced balding white guy on the edge of sixty,” is named Henry. He lives in...