Credit: Excerpted from SNAKE OIL, provided courtesy of Mariner Books/HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2024 by Kelsey Mueller.
When the reporter from Entrepreneur rings the bell, I’m in the kitchen, chopping vegetables in a silk jumpsuit. Onions sweat in butter on the stove.
Jeremy Krill wears dark jeans, expensive Italian loafers, and a baby blue fleece with SAN FRANCISCO embroidered across the chest. The cold summer weather takes even prestigious journalists by surprise.
I settle him in at the kitchen island. Cooking for writers is one of my tricks. It’s hospitable and familiar, while giving me an excuse to turn away, pause, as if concentrating on some critical issue of heat or seasoning.
“I hope you like mushrooms,” I say. “This is a recipe from my first cookbook.”
He sets up his recorder, his leather notepad.
We talk early days of Radical—starting the company in my college apartment, dropping out, growing fast, early employees working until dawn in the dusty shell of an old community center in the Mission, formulating products in the same kitchen where people microwaved lunch and made coffee. Making the leap into tech with our app, growing faster, faster, until we ’re nearly outgrowing the top two floors of a SoMa tower.
Jeremy looks properly boggled by our numbers. Even though his magazine is naming me Entrepreneur of the Year, he didn’t take Radical seriously. His eyes dart around the kitchen, calculating how much I’m worth. Out the window, the sun condenses to a bright, shimmering yolk and splits across the water.
Gavin comes in, hair wet from surfing. He shakes Jeremy’s hand, amiable, accepting his congratulations on the wedding, replying to the query of what he’s working on with talk of the garden, effectively curtailing Jeremy’s interest.
I pour the wine, and his attention returns to me.
“Pretty staggering rate of growth right from the start,” he says, grasping for our groove. “What’s your secret?”
I sprinkle bowls of mushroom bourguignon with fresh chives.
Thoughtfully, I muse, “In a world of skeptics, I’m open-minded. I don’t dismiss anything. There’s a vast world of wellness we’re only beginning to understand, ancient traditions resurfacing and astonishing us with their wisdom. Energy, beauty, sex, spirit, mind, heart—they all have higher planes, infinite potential. I’m always asking: What would help me feel better, live better? Even as Radical grows, it’s still incredibly personal. I can’t work any other way.”
Jeremy sits forward, his fork quivering in his hand. I brace for the inevitable.
“Your father was also in business.” He watches me with all the concern of a hunter sighting a deer. “He was convicted of fraud. And here you are, Entrepreneur of the Year. How did your dad’s fall from grace influence you?”
Gavin’s foot moves to the lowest rung of my stool.
“I’m often asked that.” I’ve mastered my tone: serious, unoffended. It implies that I’ve worked through this with a therapist, achieved closure.
“My dad made major mistakes, and paid a high price. He lost everything. He went to jail.
“I was thirteen. The most important thing to me wasn’t business, obviously. It was the loss of my dad.
“As a CEO, the lesson I take is that authenticity is the central thing. At Radical, I’ve always taken that incredibly seriously. I promise radical honesty. Some people even say I go too far.”
This bait is juicy: my sex diary, the full-body mud mask I wore in lieu of clothing on a magazine cover, the backless red-carpet dress that revealed purple cupping bruises.
“You don’t have many boundaries.”
“I’m an open book.”
“You’ve drawn almost as many detractors as admirers.”
“Inevitable, on the internet.”
“Still. There are vocal skeptics of wellness. If it’s real, or only snake oil.”
Squeezing my napkin in my lap, I explain that some people are quashers. They take pleasure in tearing down ideas, mocking and dismissing.
“Even the premise, that wellness is ‘fake’: What does that even mean? Wellness is sleep and nutrition and mindfulness. Surely those are ‘real’?”
It’s a strain to keep impatience from my voice. “My followers are questers. They’re curious, open-minded, optimistic. They want to explore.”
The meal is almost over. It’s been a straightforward interview, but I’m drained. Maybe it’s the reminder that my dad won’t walk me down the aisle, that he never saw Radical. He died soon after I started Stanford, but he’d faded to a ghost of his former self long before then.
Touch Greatness at Jake’s, that was his tagline. His ads played on the radio. A memorabilia store sounds quaint now, but I was proud, living in our big house in a Seattle suburb, ignoring the classmates who bragged about whose dad was higher up at Boeing, because my dad flew me around the country. At arenas and stadiums and ballparks, we sat in floor seats and box seats and sometimes climbed the bleachers to rub elbows with real fans. The hoi polloi, he’d say. He wore swishing jackets and sneakers. His was the shrill whistle the TV microphones picked up.
Fraud sounds so serious. He forged signatures. The plastic-sheathed, UV-proofed treasures proudly displayed in the shop were fake.
I never knew why he did it, or how much he forged. Surely some of it was real. Hadn’t we gone to all those games, met so many athletes? I shook their hands myself.
For dessert, there’s pie from the bakery in town. Fetching cashew cream from the fridge, I linger, wait for my flushed skin to cool.
When I sit, I’m sure my face shows nothing, but Gavin presses his foot to mine.
Jeremy Krill cuts his pie with the side of his fork, chomps aggressively. “Do you expect Radical to reach a billion-dollar valuation?”
Tap-tap of my fork on the plate, like I’m considering this.
“A billion is an arbitrary number. A point along the journey to a larger goal.”
Jeremy raises his eyebrows. Nobody believes me when I tell them how big Radical is going to be. Then, when I surpass my own predictions, they forget that they ever doubted me, even suspect that I’ve come up short.
“Still,” Jeremy presses. “It’s a landmark. Do you expect your next financing round to make Radical a unicorn?”
My fork stalls. “I haven’t announced a new round.”
He lifts his phone, taps the screen, confusion creasing his forehead.
“We’re off the grid,” Gavin says, lacing his hands behind his head. “Disconnecting is crucial for health and creativity. In the future, being offline will be considered a luxury.”
Disappointed, Jeremy drops the phone, but not the point. “I heard a rumor that you’re about to open another financing round. Your, what, fourth?”
“I’m afraid my Legal Team wouldn’t like me to comment.” My teeth clash together. “Do you happen to know the source?”
“A Twitter account. One of your detractors, Radical lunacy, or something. I take it from your reaction that the post wasn’t a joke.”
“No comment,” Gavin chimes in cheerfully.
“You promise radical transparency,” Jeremy says, a challenge entering his voice. “You let your followers into every area of your life. Do you have any secrets? Besides the financing round, of course.”
“I’m an open book.” I smile. I hold up a finger. “But I don’t like spoilers. I’m the one telling the story.”
A razor-sharp literary thriller about three women vying for power at a wellness startup, where the cost of ambition might be deadly
One woman’s elixir is another woman’s poison
Rhoda West is Silicon Valley’s favorite female CEO: the luminously charismatic founder of the fast-growing startup Radical, a wellness company whose core mission is the betterment of women’s lives. Rhoda’s Instagram page offers intimate glimpses of her personal life alongside promotions for the cult-status products developed in the Well, Radical’s secretive lab.
Dani Lang is a “quester,” as Rhoda calls her most avid followers. Dani found Radical at a low point in her life, and took an entry level job just to get in the door. When she volunteers to test a controversial new supplement, Dani wins an opportunity to rise in the company, even to work with Rhoda herself.
Cecelia Cole is a “quasher.” She grinds away at the Customer Worship queue, resenting the entitled customers, the woo-woo Radical jargon, and Rhoda’s smiling hypocrisy. Cecelia, who suffers from a miserable chronic illness, knows that the remedies Rhoda sells can’t cure real sickness.
Just as Rhoda announces another fundraising round that could turn Radical into a billion-dollar unicorn, an anonymous Twitter account begins spilling snarky gossip from inside the startup. Is Rhoda really the nurturing leader she presents to the world, or a fraud? Or is this just another case of a woman in business being punished for her strength and audacity?
Tensions rise and loyalties clash, then tragedy strikes during a company party. In the aftermath of what looks more and more like a crime, even the most faithful questers begin to wonder to what lengths Rhoda will go to protect her company.
Part page-turning suspense, part darkly comic skewering of startup culture, Snake Oil is a gripping exploration of ambition and authenticity, shining a revealing light on the wellness world.
Thriller [Mariner Books, On Sale: September 17, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780062867957 / ]
I’m Kelsey Rae Dimberg, author of GIRL IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR—a debut novel about a nanny who becomes embroiled in a powerful family’s secrets, set in the blistering heat of an Arizona summer. CrimeReads called it one of the Most Anticipated Crime Books of Summer.
Setting is a major inspiration for me: I’ve moved around frequently, both when I was growing up and as an adult. I’ve lived in Seattle, Salt Lake City, Houston, Denver, Phoenix, Milwaukee, San Francisco, and Chicago. I love moving—soaking in the terrain and culture of a new place. GIRL IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR was hugely inspired by my time in Arizona, both as a child and from my college years. I studied English-Literature and Spanish at Arizona State University, and got an MFA from the University of San Francisco.
For almost 10 years, I worked as a writer and editor for online brands: as a fashion writer for a Google app, a humorous coupon writer for Groupon, and as a food writer for Taste of Home. I currently live in Milwaukee with my husband and our Australian shepherd pup. Usually I’m reading or writing, but I also enjoy baking sourdough bread and pizza, running along the lakefront, and streaming British crime shows.
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