Charley Anderson

Anderson grows up in Fargo, North Dakota, where his mother runs a boarding house. His father left the family about the time he was born. He is "a chunky little boy with untidy towhair and gray eyes." He has a knack for mechanical things and works as a machinist. He is politically leftist and on the side of the workers, serves as a pilot during war, and after the war goes into manufacturing with a friend. They produce airplane starter motors. At first, the business world is over his head, but he wants to make big money and be a wheeler and dealer, and eventually he learns to discuss stocks and move in the world of high finance. He loses touch with his origins, with the radical sympathies of his younger days, and with his own high standards for mechanical work. In the end, he argues with...