At the end of his sophomore year at Columbia, young go-getter Ari Edelman returns to his modest family home on Long Island and takes a job as a handyman at Ocean House, the iconic Hamptons estate of wealthy author Edward Vann. As the summer advances, so does Ari's position in Edward's life, and he even helps to shape Edward's current novel. But the ambitious Ari has always wanted more than what life tends to offer, and by the time he reaches middle age, Ari has constructed a fantasy of that 1950s summer starring an alter ego named Ned Deane, who served as Edward's close friend, cowriter, and eventual lover.

Inspired by André Gide's Les Faux-monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters), Ed Cone has constructed a sweeping literary drama of one man's dissatisfaction with the tedium of normal life. Through closely paralleled storylines, The Counterfeiter cleverly unfolds to reveal the fluid nature of identity, sexuality, and love.