He is trying, sometimes, just to get by in a foreign place. He is trying to understand Jane, his girlfriend from a privileged background. He is trying to become a member of one of Harvard's elite finals clubs.

David Ayan is her singular Somali-born student. But it is Mike Teak who faces the most dangerous struggle-because when he discovers a horrific conspiracy, he immediately realizes that he has become expendable, with nowhere to run and no one to trust.“It's clear this young writer has only begun to show where his prodigious storytelling will take us.” -People“Smart and sexy.” -The Washington Post“Tempered by some hilarious insider glimpses of Harvard life, An Expensive Education is terrific, a thriller noir that's difficult to put down or forget.A happily married mother of two in a tenure-track job at Harvard, she has just won a Pulitzer Prize for her book lionizing Hatashil, an East African freedom fighter. David Ayan struggles with his identity and Susan Lowell struggles against rumors about her relationship with Hatashil, who has been accused of ordering the village massacre. Also shaken is Lowell’s student, David Ayan, who was born in the targeted village, a world away from Harvard’s most exclusive final club, the Porcellian, which is courting him and Jane, the smart, risk-taking daughter of East Coast money who’s sleeping with him. It’s a routine assignment until, minutes after they meet, the village is decimated by a missile assault, and although Mike escapes, his life is changed forever.Echoing across continents, the assault disrupts professor Susan Lowell, who has just won a Pulitzer Prize for her book celebrating Hatashil. On a covert mission in a Somali village, he delivers cash and cell phones to Hatashil, a legendary orphan warrior turned rebel leader.

He’s a twenty-five-year-old scholar/athlete from an upper-class family who was recruited by his godfather to work for a U.S. A young man goes from Ivy League to international intrigue: “A spy who could have easily walked off the pages of le Carré’s better works.”-Publishers WeeklyMike Teak has a classic Harvard profile.

An Expensive Education by Nick McDonell