A parable of the go-go ‘80s

Only a writer of consummate craftsmanship and scope could write a novel about a series of real estate deals in a small town an hour and a half from New York City and make it so fully satisfying as to be thrilling. Jane Smiley has done it.

Smiley won a Pulitzer Prize for 1991’s “A Thousand Acres,” a novel regarded as “King Lear on the prairie,” about the deterioration of an Iowa farm family. She followed this Shakespeare-inspired tragic tour de force with a comedy, “Moo,” a sociologically precise satire set at a Midwestern “cow college” facing budget cuts. Still in a comic vein, 2000’s “Horse Heaven” circled back on interests she showed in her first novel, “Barn Blind” in 1980 -- the world of those who raise, race and love horses -- and got it right.

Now Smiley has tackled the shift in our country’s attitude toward money during the dawn of the Ronald Reagan era: that moment in American history when suddenly it seemed there was free money to be had, thanks to changes in the tax code; when deal-making took on a brand-new sophistication, including a good understanding of which rules could be broken with impunity; and when the conflict between developing and preserving land reached a turning point.

“Good Faith” finds Smiley in slyly comic “Moo” mode again. It is the spring of 1982, and Joe Stratford, 40, a divorced small-town real estate agent in Portsmouth, a generic suburb a few hours from New York City, with small ambitions and a reputation for trustworthiness, is about to be tempted. Joe’s Eve is Felicity, the married sister of Sally Baldwin, his high school girlfriend who later died in a car accident. “It was Sally Baldwin who brought me along, told me what to wear and do and think and say,” the malleable Joe explains in the opening of “Good Faith.”

Sally’s parents, Gordon and Sally Baldwin, have raised a brood of five and treat Joe like a favored son. Gordon, who believes in taking unfair advantage of everyone he negotiates with, is Joe’s real estate mentor. So when Felicity picks Joe up at a bar and involves him in a steamy, no-strings-attached affair, he is risking a lot. “Imagine a group of friends and family sitting around an outdoor table, eating peacefully. Imagine the umbrella shading them. Imagine the pole of the umbrella going through the circular hole in the table and then into the patio. Imagine a stick of dynamite inside the pole. Imagine them laughing, and then imagine a trusted member of the family lighting the dynamite.” Still, with “a perfect balance between frustration and delight,” they meet in a series of erotic encounters at his office, at houses he is showing; they even sneak away for a long snowy weekend in New York City.

Joe’s Satan is Marcus Burns, a smooth-talking former IRS bureaucrat who arrives in Portsmouth raring to partake of the lifestyles he’s dreamed about while going over the tax returns of the rich. “There’s money everywhere!” he tells Joe. “You know what they say at the IRS? Reported income is like cockroaches. For every dollar you see, there are hundreds more in hiding.... Money these days is like water. It can’t stop looking for a place to go.” Marcus also tells Joe, “Accountants are in the business of making sure the books balance. That’s all. You could steal a company blind, but if the books balance, the accountant would have done his job.”

The good-faith deal is Salt Key Farm, the 580-acre Thorpe estate, which Joe is asked to handle by its aging owners with the promise that it never fall into the hands of any of their relatives. Gordon, Marcus and Joe go into partnership and, with no money upfront, get financing from the local savings and loan association to purchase the estate and create an upscale development with 400 houses, a custom golf course, equestrian facility and bridle paths, sewage treatment plant and mini-mall.

Joe is the point man, going before the Plymouth County Board of Supervisors and rustling up advance buyers. Marcus sets up an expansive office in the most expensive shopping complex around. Gordon begins to worry, and then things start to go wrong. Astonishingly, Smiley sets this inflated deal in motion and builds page-turning suspense. Will Marcus pull off his grand scheme? Is he a genius or a con artist? Is Joe naive? Or savvy?

Joe’s perspective tends to be local: “Looking back, I would have to say that that’s when the eighties began -- the first week in June, 1982, when modest housing in our rust-belt state got decked out with Italian tile.”

Marcus voices the broader view. He senses that the baby boomers will have an insatiable thirst for luxury. He sees what is coming, down to the market for second homes, bottled water and bed and bath linens. Part of the pleasure of “Good Faith” is knowing that many of Marcus’ intuitions are correct and wondering if timing and circumstances are with him. Will he end up a billionaire or a flop -- or even a crook? (The level of risk-taking seems roughly equivalent in this universe.)

What keeps Marcus from being a monster of greed is the compassion Smiley shows for his hardscrabble upbringing. “This is not the sort of place where I come from, this nice countryside where things just seem to work out right and everyone is more or less happy,” he tells Joe. His dad and mom stole from each other. His siblings weren’t to be trusted. (This fact is reinforced when his sister Jane shows up from Kansas City to help run the office and generate loan money.)

At times it seems Joe is ill-prepared for the world that is unfolding before him. His parents are a pious pair who invite missionaries or elderly church members to their holiday dinners. Joe is an only son and dutiful (he does things like dropping by to change their furnace filter). Felicity points out his kindness and also tells him he is the most utterly transparent person she has ever met and also the most well meaning. Still, Marcus is like a grace note in his life: “It was Marcus who made it easy, smiling, talking, persuading, telling me what to do. By contrast, everything I’d done before him and everything I did after was an effort.”

“Good Faith” includes Smiley’s usual kaleidoscope of wacky and authentic bit players. There are the two Davids, a gay couple who drive a perfectly maintained Oldsmobile Toronado, and their two dogs, Marlin Perkins, a rat terrier, and Doris Day, a bichon frise, who buy their second home from Joe. There is George Sloan, who seems boring at first but then develops a fetish for a house he can’t afford to fix up, disappearing from his wife and family and camping out in it for a few days. (Sloan ends up working for a day-trading operation that figures in the novel’s denouement.)

Smiley’s range is broad, her technique masterful as she explores the forces that upset the balance in love, in work, in a country’s economy, in a region’s ecology. The light note upon which “Good Faith” ends keeps it within the framework of the comic, but not without first giving a detailed and devastating look at the greed and corrupt business practices that ultimately brought the savings and loan industry and some of our country’s major corporations and accounting firms to their knees. “Good Faith” is a cautionary prequel just right for our times. And great fun, to boot.