This is a great saga, rescued from the depths of recent history. While it took a decade to put this Humpty-Dumpty back together again, its lessons are now yours to discover…

At the crossroads where America’s first Gilded Age joins England’s Victorian Era, Irishman John George Adair meets his widowed American bride, Cornelia Wadsworth Ritchie. Theirs becomes the era’s first “transatlantic marriage.” Together they blaze a fateful trail across three continents, leaving a wake of dispossession whose impact is still felt today. From the American Revolution onwards, and peaking from 1861 to 1885, the Adair’s, their forbearers and cohorts, uproot entire communities of indigenous people – Irish and Native American – from their ancestral homelands.

Facing an “untamed continent,” this brilliant duo does anything necessary to maintain their “birth right” – a lavish Victorian lifestyle – wherever they see fit. Beyond their salons in England and castle in Ireland, they boldly launch the real Bonanza – the first cattle empire of the Texas Panhandle – becoming the largest landowners of their time.

Today, as the Anglosphere embarks on its second Gilded Age, these fateful lessons are more important than ever… What will you find?

Learn more about Bob Spiegelman on his bio

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