"Laura, a brilliant student and promising scholar, escapes from her small town, working class background to join the ranks of the academic elite on a Weatherfield scholarship to Oxford University. She enthusiastically throws herself into her schoolwork, yet she is never able to escape a feeling of unease and dislocation among the anointed "best and brightest" of her generation. Years later, back in the U.S. with a Ph.D. in Henry James studies, she loses her job as an adjunct professor and reconnects with the Weatherfield Foundation. Commissioned to write a history for their gala reunion, she becomes obsessed by the Gilded Age origins of the Weatherfield fortune, rooted in the exploitation and misery of sugar production. As she is lured back into abandoned friendships within the glimmering group, she discovers hidden aspects of herself and others that point the way to a terrifying freedom. BENEFIT is a gripping coming-of-age story that offers a withering critique of American meritocracy"--