Kane and Abel is … [about survival over a long time-span] involving two principals—a Boston banker named William Kane, and a Polish immigrant to the US, one Abel Rosnovski…. Inhabitants of different social worlds, their paths cross initially when Kane's bank withdraws crucial support for the first American who gave Abel a break, thereby triggering off the benefactor's suicide. For this, Kane is never forgiven, and is thereafter pursued by the Pole through thick and thin in a vendetta which sets Wall Street alight.

If you detect in all this a whiff of schmaltz, then your senses are in good working order. No doubt it will sell well in its blockbusting way; but so does Kentucky fried chicken. It's the recipe that counts. (p. 355)