The story of a family exploited by unsavory immigrants, A Better Life is based on a plan floated—but never pursued—by New York City mayor Eric Adams, in which the city would pay residents to house asylum seekers. In Shriver’s alternative history, the city implements the plan (it’s called Big Apple, Big Heart) and Gloria Bonaventura is eager to open her Brooklyn home to a deserving immigrant. The 60-something divorced mother of three grown children has already been active in helping immigrants. There’s more than enough room in the charming five-bedroom early-20th-century home she won in her divorce: The only other resident is her son Nico, who’s spent the past four years since graduating from Fordham holed up in the basement bedroom, playing video games and watching YouTube. ... Nico is the only Bonaventura child who thinks his mother’s charity is a terrible idea, and not just because it means he must move into his childhood bedroom upstairs. Walking through the city, he sees that it ‘was being transformed over a mere eighteen months into an unrecognizable third-world hellscape. … A cascade of strangers had thrown themselves on the mercy of people like his parents who had no rational motivation to assume such a burden and who were therefore being taken for chumps.’ “His older sisters have lives of their own but frequently drop by to support their mother’s altruism and chastise Nico for his cynicism. They adore the new arrival, Martine. Seeking asylum because of an abusive husband in Honduras (or so she claims), Martine cooks and cleans and contributes much more to the family than Nico does. But he spots holes in Martine’s stories and sees everything she does as part of a larger plan to manipulate his mother. “Increasingly suspect events push the reader toward seeing Nico’s side of things. When Martine’s brother Domingo arrives, Gloria lets him live in the basement with his sister, even though she’s not compensated by the city for him—and despite the strange nature of their supposedly sibling relationship. When Martine’s children in Honduras (whom she had never mentioned before) are kidnapped, Gloria dips into her retirement account to pay the hefty ransom. A second uninvited guest makes himself at home, a charming business partner of Domingo’s named Alonso who has the virtue of being honest about how some immigrants game America’s naive policies—as he proceeds to do with the Bonaventuras.”