Cathy B. (-cathy-) reviewed on 6/19/2006 + 22 more book reviews

In this extradorinarily powerful epic Gore Vidal recreates America's Gilded Age-a period of promise and possibility, of empire-building and fierce political rivalries. As America struggles to define her destiny, so beautiful and ambitious Caroline Sanford fights to control her own fate. We meet her first in the summer of 1896: as a New York court is deciding the fate of the Sanford family fortune, Caroline is being propelled toward a marriage to Secretary of State John Hay's mild young son, Del. Unwilling to be trapped, Caroline chooses instead her own path, one that will bring her power rivaling that of the most influential men of her generation. From the back offices of her Washington newspaper, Caroline confronts the two men who threaten to thwart her ambition: William Randolph Hearst and his fiercely ambitious protege, Blaise Sanford, Caroline's half brother. In their struggles for power the lives of brother and sister become intertwined with those of the leading figures of their day-President McKinley and his successor Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings, Bryan and Henry James, the Astors, Vanderbilts, and Whitneys. In a vivid and breathtaking work of fiction Gore Vidal sweeps us from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, from the salvaged republic of Lincoln to a nation boldly reaching for the world.

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