Promise Land: The Inside Story of the Puerto Rico Debt Crisis

TK-page paperback /6" x 9" / ISBN 9781589882157
Publication Date: 7/21/2026 (available for preorder)

Puerto Rico is America’s forgotten island, and since 2015, the site of the largest governmental default in U.S. history. After the island’s governor declared its $70 billion of debt “not payable,” House minority leader Nancy Pelosi extracted a promise from House Speaker Paul Ryan to “take action” on Puerto Rico in return for the Democratic votes he needed for must-pass December 2015 spending legislation. This handshake led to a 2016 law called PROMESA (“promise” in Spanish), which subjected Puerto Rico to an oversight board, but also gave Puerto Rico the power to file for bankruptcy, a right no state has.

Weaving together his first-hand experience as a member of the board—and during the crucial period, its chair— with astute insight into the key federal and local lawmakers, David Skeel recounts the epic struggle to restructure Puerto Rico’s debt and restore fiscal stability, a battle protracted by the most destructive hurricane in a century, a scandal in the governor’s office, earthquakes, and the pandemic. The board was challenged both by protestors furious at the colonial implications of the board and by bondholders unhappy with the restructuring, one of which enlisted former New Jersey governor Chris Christie in a scheme to derail Skeel’s reappointment.

Promise Land is a riveting story about the island Theodore Roosevelt urged America’s leadership to seize at the end of the Spanish-American War, and about how governmental crises are handled in twenty-first century America.


David Skeel is the author of four books: Debt’s Dominion (Princeton University Press, 2001); Icarus in the Boardroom (Oxford University Press, 2005); The New Financial Deal (Wiley, 2011); and True Paradox (InterVarsity Press, 2014). Debt’s Dominion, his history of bankruptcy law in America, is considered a classic in the field. Skeel has taught bankruptcy and other business law classes, with occasional forays into law-and-literature, for thirty-five years, the last twenty-five of those at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. After being appointed as one of the seven members of the Puerto Rico oversight board created by Congress in 2016 in response to Puerto Rico’s decade-long financial crisis, Skeel served on the board for nearly eight years, the last three and a half as chair. Under his leadership, the Board achieved the largest public debt restructuring in American history and shored up Puerto Rico’s radically underfunded pension system. Skeel lives in Philadelphia.