The Megabucks

Ray’s got a problem: His wife’s parents have won the lottery—just as he’s in the process of leaving her for another woman. Although he’s successfully self-employed, how can he avoid the temptation of returning to a marriage that’s suddenly a lot more appealing? Set in rural Maine, The Megabucks explores moral choice in an age of economic desperation.

“At the end of it, I was smiling in satisfaction of knowing I had just finished a tale that was very well told. The piece is also just plain well-written. The ending is remarkable, as it would have been so easy to succumb to cliché, something Dolleman totally side-steps in a fresh and gratifying way.”—Clay Reynolds, Final Judge

“The Megabucks is a gripping story of one small town’s struggle to cope with a sudden shift in expectations. With a handful of characters and sixty-some pages, Rusty Dolleman paints a tragic and telling portrait of a culture that values the quick fortune over the fair wage.”—Tyler Mcmahon, author of Kilometer 99 and How The Mistakes Were Made

“This story whispers over your skin, hooks into your gut, and barrels up though the knuckles of your spine.”—Matt W. Miller, author of Club Icarus and Cameo Diner

RUSTY DOLLEMAN, currently living in West Paris, Maine, is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire’s MA program in Writing, and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He’s currently at work on a novel about a right-wing militia that takes over a small town in northern New England.