Does this sound familiar? A first-time novelist chooses to explore the bittersweet qualities of post-college life and love in the Big City.

But don’t be too cynical. After all, there are only a finite number of plots to begin with and, besides, who doesn’t remember their first serious relationship wistfully and dramatically — regardless of where it happened or how successful it was? With “The Futures,” debut author Anna Pitoniak deftly, assuredly and compellingly explores all of these elements through the prism of the 2008 financial collapse.

The world seems wide open and blushing with promise when Evan Peck and his girlfriend Julia Edwards graduate from Yale and move to Manhattan together. Theirs seems a fated, it’s-a-beautiful-life relationship. Evan, son of grocery store owners in small town British Columbia, was a scholarship hockey star/scholar who scores a tremendous gig at a prestigious hedge fund. Julia, from privileged Boston/Nantucket status, is less certain of her future but has the luxury to figure it all out while working at a small nonprofit.

Evan’s job, though, quickly requires exhausting focus and 20-hour days and, romantically and professionally unfulfilled, Julia begins to spend more and more time with a charismatic young journalist. It’s a bad combination of developments, and when Wall Street implodes and a deal Evan was working on seems to have suspicious undertones, the fissures in Julia and Evan’s relationship broaden dangerously.

A lot of the success of “The Futures” is because Pitoniak so beautifully captures the whirlwind possibilities of graduating and being loosed upon New York City — as well as the potential toxicity of naïve expectations and souring dreams. Julia and Evan are both likeable but flawed and, as such, are susceptible to real-world developments as well as the vagaries of youth and e’er evolving emotions.

Against this complex backdrop, Pitoniak so empathetically captures her two protagonists that it’s only natural to wonder if she’s infused each with a bit of herself.

“I think that’s exactly right. The characters aren’t based on real people in any one-to-one sense, but part of me is in Evan and part of me is in Julia,” Pitoniak says by phone a few days before a Wednesday appearance at the Savoy Bookshop and Café in Westerly, where she’ll discuss and sign copies of “The Futures.” “Like Evan, I grew up in a small British Columbia town and went to Yale (she graduated in 2010).

“And, like Julia at Yale, all of my friends approached graduation with jobs lined up and goals — and I had nothing. The good part of not having a plan was that a lot of my feelings and anxieties and the things I had to negotiate through that period of my life became part of the novel.”

Another tense and propelling component of the story is how well — in fluid prose that even a can’t-balance-my-checkbook layperson understands — Pitoniak captures Wall Street, the odd, frat-bro culture of big-bucks hedge funds, and the insane complexities of finance. This includes a fictional Pitoniak-invented deal involving the Canadian lumber market, the housing collapse, and China.

“The 2008 financial crisis remains a particularly vivid historical moment for me,” says Pitoniak, who researched the subject diligently in order to understand it and convey it for readers. “I’d put (the collapse) up there with 9/11 and the recent election as one of those events that has a decided before-and-after line in your mind. A lot of my friends were going into finance and had jobs lined up — and we woke up one morning and a lot of those companies just didn’t exist anymore.”

Fortunately, Pitoniak, who majored in English and was an editor of the Yale Daily News, had an avid interest in writing and the business of publication and soon, she says, “lucked into” a great job that set her on a career path. In fact, her current “day job” is as an editor at Random House, where she’s helmed a variety of fiction and nonfiction titles. But, as many similarly inclined folks in the publishing profession have learned, connections and editorial skills aren’t a guarantee of anything.

For one, the process of writing a novel is very different from editing one, and every author has to learn a process that works. Some outline extensively; some use a character or specific scene as a launching pad; others just have a vague plotline and dive into it.

“I did do a little outlining, but not a ton,” Pitoniak says. “I had the idea of the characters and the climactic events that I’d be writing towards, but I discovered a lot of the plot and a lot about the characters as I was writing. The first draft was basically just to work out the details, and I took that skeletal plan and rewrote extensively, and the final draft bore very little resemblance to the first.”

As for already working at a major publishing house and how that could perhaps help her score a book deal, Pitoniak was anxious about that situation.

“I actually kept it very quiet and didn’t tell anyone except family and a few close friends that I was trying to write a novel,” she says. “I kept it to myself to lower the pressure. I thought, ‘If I get to the end of the draft and this isn’t working, I could set it aside and not have to deal with any expectations.’

“When it came time to start the process of finding a publisher, I was wearing my writer’s hat. I’d seen as an editor how hard it is to get published. A lot of books that are really good don’t make it, and I feel very lucky to have found a great publisher that’s letting me get (the novel) out to the world.”

In terms of her own project, Pitoniak quickly learned there’s a significant line of delineation between being a writer and an editor, particularly when it comes to your own book.

“I am an editor but definitely not exempt from that need,” she laughs. “It’s almost impossible to edit yourself, and Carina Guiterman did a brilliant job of working with me on pacing and streamlining and character development. I learned that, without Carina, I never would have gotten through it on my own — and it was only having written the book and gone through the process that I began to really believe that.”

IF YOU GO

Who: Novelist Anna Pitoniak

What: Discusses and signs copies of her first book, “The Futures”

When: 6-7:30 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Savoy Bookshop and Cafe, 10 Canal St., Westerly

How much: Free, copies available for purchase

More info: (401) 213-3901