White Birch by Paul Edmund Lessard is a darkly humorous novel about the trappings of generational wealth and the human cost of ambition. The White Birch Hotel in the city of Tuffty Town teems with poorly kept secrets: detectives tapping lobby phones for news of banished royals; nervous lovers hiding traces of their trysts from prying eyes; captains of finance hatching plans in the thick haze of the smoking bar. We find among this clamour Henry Huvvy: bon vivant, boulevardier, and mainstay of milieus both refined and ragtag. But when the lure of unattainable love drives him to build, with questionable tactics, a new empire of opulence, the fate of an erstwhile princess is set against his own. White Birch introduces a vividly rendered cast of characters into a world at once familiar and delightfully uncanny.