Paper Moon, related by an adult Addie, begins shortly after the death of Addie’s mother when she is taken in by Moses "Long Boy" Pray, who may be Addie’s biological father. He is initially more concerned with her potential as an accomplice as he uses her in his schemes to sell personalized Bibles or photographs. Addie soon proves that she is intelligent beyond her years and that she has a natural affinity for their chosen line of work, since her youth and innocent façade disarm victims.
The
novel’s structure is episodic, with each section focusing on a different confidence game, but each event illustrates a portion of Addie’s education and reveals aspects of her character. Addie and Long Boy make a brief foray into legitimate business after an appearance by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Long Boy acquires a stack of Roosevelt photographs from a printer, and he and Addie set out to sell the pictures to shopkeepers. Since Roosevelt’s programs to assist the poor are so popular, the pictures sell readily for one
dollar to a dollar and a half. The work does not turn as quick a profit as selling a five- to ten-dollar Bible, however, and going store to store soon exhausts the Prays. The incident illustrates Long Boy’s need for the excitement of the con game and his lack of interest in legitimate business. It also explores Roosevelt and Depression era programs; these will trouble Long Boy later. Long Boy next moves to a scheme involving dropped wallets, which relies on the dishonesty and greed of his victims, a theme that will remain important throughout the novel as well.
The first hint of Addie’s sense of compassion, as well as her ability to utilize what she has learned from Long Boy, arrives when they come upon a carnival. It is there that Addie sees a hermaphrodite in the freak show. She observes that the townspeople expect the promise of a half-man, half-woman to be fake. They are uncomfortable when they encounter a true biological curiosity, and Addie notes they would rather have been cheated in this case than to find something that makes them uncomfortable. Later, she is polite to the man from the freak show, and that kindness delights him.
Also at the carnival, Addie and Long Boy pick up dancer Trixie Delight and her maid, Imogene. Trixie is not only a dancer but also a sometime prostitute, but Long Boy’s vision is clouded. Addie vows to reveal Trixie for what she is, partly out of necessity and partly out of jealousy. In exchange for freedom from Trixie, Imogene helps set up a tryst between Trixie and a clerk. Addie then arranges for Long Boy to catch the two together.
Addie and Long Boy move on to con a moonshiner by selling him his own stock. The incident gets them in trouble, since the moonshiner attempts to squash competition, but, in their escape, they wind up with a bale of
cotton. In selling the single bale, Long Boy realizes that warehouse practices are exploitable in much the way that he planned to cheat the moonshiner. Cotton sales are handled by samples only, and the actual bales are warehoused. The system relies on the honesty of the poor farmers, who are frequently cheated by buyers paying less than what their cotton is worth.
Addie and Long Boy make a small
fortune in cotton using samples and false warehouse receipts. This scam works well until a buyer realizes that Long Boy has no knowledge of a Roosevelt program to reduce the cotton supply. They escape the police only with the help of Major Carter E. Lee, who becomes a mentor to Addie and Long Boy. Lee deals in worthless silver mines and the sale of stock in dummy corporations. Long Boy and Addie work with him on several schemes before heading off on their own again for a time.
They encounter Lee again in New Orleans, where he is developing a plan to con the aging heiress Amelia Sass, who once disowned a daughter. The daughter died in a hurricane, but she is believed to have had a child who survived. The idea is to have Addie pose as thegranddaughter so that Lee and Amelia’s nephew, Beau Goldsborough, can obtain her fortune.
Addie successfully infiltrates the Sass household but comes to care for Amelia and Mayflower, her maid. When she learns that most of the fortune was lost to a swindler, she convinces Long Boy that they must help. With Major Lee’s assistance, they convince Beau that he must become Amelia’s guardian. He does this because of his own greed, assuming responsibility for her bills and expecting eventually to inherit her vast fortune. Amelia is well cared for until her death. Addie mourns for her but is soon off with Long Boy on a new excursion.
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