Kane & Abel

Two boys are born on 18 April 1906, and nothing else about their beginnings matches. William Lowell Kane is the heir to a Boston banking family. He goes to St. Paul's School and then Harvard, and a place at the bank is waiting for him.

Abel Rosnovski starts life in Poland as Władek Koskiewicz. Hardship follows him through Russia and Siberia, and he reaches America with ambition as his only possession.

The story runs across six decades. Both men rise in banking and in the hotel trade, and both live through the Depression and the Second World War. Their paths keep crossing, and each meeting feeds a feud that neither man will drop.

Their children, Richard and Florentyna, are drawn into the quarrel. The book is a long, fast-moving family saga of ambition, class and grudges, and it begins a series that continues with The Prodigal Daughter. Whether either family can ever put the hatred down stays open.