Book
Kane and Abel
First published 1979
Born on 18 April 1906, William Lowell Kane enters a wealthy Boston banking family while Władek Koskiewicz grows up in poverty on a Polish estate. War and revolution destroy Władek’s childhood world and carry him through imprisonment and migration to the United States, where he takes the name Abel Rosnovski and begins building a hotel business. William follows the path prepared for him in finance, but personal loss and institutional rivalry harden his ambition.
Their lives repeatedly intersect as the prosperity of the 1920s gives way to depression, renewed war and the expansion of American corporate power. A misunderstanding becomes a lifelong vendetta, and each man uses money, influence and family loyalty against the other. The novel treats their parallel careers as a multigenerational saga of immigration, class mobility and the destructive persistence of inherited grievance.
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