Kane and Abel

On the same spring day in 1906, two boys are born worlds apart. William Lowell Kane arrives in a grand Boston house as heir to the Kane and Cabot bank. Abel is found in a Polish forest beside his mother, who does not survive the birth, and is taken in by a trapper's family before being raised in the castle of a local baron.

William loses his father when the Titanic goes down and grows into a cool, gifted banker. Abel survives war, prison camps and a long escape before reaching New York, where he works his way up from hotel waiter, studying economics on the side, to running a growing chain of hotels. When the Depression hits, a decision at William's bank costs Abel a dear friend and patron, and from then on each man sets out to bring the other down. Neither knows how often their lives touch, or that their own children will one day fall in love.

Short chapters alternate between the two men, which keeps the pages turning. Around 656 pages in the current paperback. The story continues in The Prodigal Daughter, about Abel's daughter Florentyna.