The Golden Pinnacle
The Golden Pinnacle reflects my life-long interest in a period that receives short shrift from historians and novelists alike, the Industrial Revolution. It is usually cast in a negative light and dismissed as a "Gilded Age." How did the United States transform itself from a nation of small farmers and merchants, in ruins and deeply divided after the Civil War, into an economic powerhouse in less than five decades? The world witnessed an explosion of innovation and enterprise not seen before or since. Virtually every good, service, and technology we have today had its roots in the Industrial Revolution.The age's most compelling stories are of the entrepreneurs who built the nation, men who started with little or nothing and created empires. The hero of The Golden Pinnacle, Daniel Durand, fits the archetype, an orphan who does not even know his birthday or how he got his name, but makes his fortune on Wall Street. Unlike many of the era's giants, Daniel recognizes the essential condition for his and America's success―freedom―and fights for it.The Golden Pinnacle is historical fiction, but as Foreword Clarion Reviews put it: "Under it all are messages about business, finance, and government that are surprisingly relevant today." The greatest outpouring of ingenuity in history cannot be dismissed as a gilded age, rather, it must be rediscovered as the golden age it was and its lessons learned.