Back in 2000, U.S. elites believed in the power of free trade, modern finance, technological breakthroughs, and wise government stewardship to lead the nation into broad prosperity. Then the country was blindsided by disaster—a burst tech bubble, a trade shock resulting from China’s trampling in global markets, a housing bust, and a health crisis sent the U.S. into three recessions, creating a more fractured and unequal society. Much of what economists thought they knew about the elegant market system they helped build turned out to be incomplete or just plain wrong. Now they had to fix it on the fly. This is the story of what happened, told through the experiences of an extraordinary couple at the center of it all. Economics, it turns out, is not science, as so many economists wanted it to be. Nor is it math nor mere ideology. Economics is an endeavor. Most good love stories are too.