Charley Anderson
Undistinguished in life until becoming a World War I flying ace, Charlie manages the even more difficult job of translation wartime heroics into peacetime success. An inventor who becomes an obsession stock market speculator, Charlie’s major moral failure is a willingness to risk his principles in pursuit more wealth and more women.
Joe Askew
An officer during the war who goes into the airplane parts business in a partnership with Charley Anderson afterward. He is fated to become one of the victims of Charlie’s disappearing sense of morality.
Nat Benton
Charley’s go-to man for stock market tips, Benton’s advice as Anderson’s stockbroker is sufficiently keen to accumulate enough piles of stock to sell out Joe.
Ben Compton
The story’s tragic hero, Compton is an active member of the Wobblies—members of the socialist labor organization the Industrial Workers of the World—who takes on a mission history will prove to have been impossible: convincing all workers of their status as exploited in order to unite them as one singular powerful force against the owners. Beaten, castigated as a subversive and a coward, his own status as a conscientious objector is not deemed worthy to refuse being drafted and so he goes to jail for beliefs. Later he will be expelled from the Communist Party.
Eveline Hutchins
The very portrait of safe, comfortable middle class conformity in rebellion against itself through safe comfortable middle class milieus sharing with rebellious artists and serious culture. Many men will pursue her; none exactly hurting for money.
Fenian Fainy (Mac) McCreary
Ungrounded radical who ultimately winds up sacrificing everything including family for the sake fighting on the side labor and the working man.
J. Ward Moorehouse
Working his way up and out of journalism and into its more lucrative cousin public relations, his success in business is matched by failures back on the homefront. That includes two marriages.
Jose O’Riely
Spanish artist loosely based on Diego Rivera who—though married like Rivera—becomes one of the many conquests of Eveline Hutchins on her path of rebellion against growing up with a father who a member of the clergy. A liberal clergyman, it must be noted.
Don Stevens
A refreshing break from the cynical, detached and world-weary newspaperman of Jazz Age fiction is the radical supporter Sacco and Vanzetti, two men falsely accused, wrongly convicted and tragically executed as anarchist bombers in perhaps the first of a long line of Trials of the Century stretching through the 1900’s.
Eleanor Stoddard
Stoddard, Eleanor Designer and eventual companion of J. Ward Morehouse who through hard work and skillful management of her image becomes a successful businesswoman and socialite in John Dos
Janey Williams
Janey is a spunky young go-getter with moxie to spare who makes a name for herself in the cutthroat world of business run by men for men. Not really; Janet has ambitions to get out of the house and enjoy a career in the world of business. As an unusually efficient and businesslike secretary to Moorehouse, she enjoy success outside the home, but rather than spunk or moxie she tends to exhibit a more bitter root. Part of what make her so bitter her having to occasionally deal with a no-account brother suddenly showing up without warning with a designs on getting something from her.
Gladys Wheatley
Gladys almost manages to duplicate Eleanor's triple way. She is also a socialite...from Detroit society. She also wins the heart of a successful man. But then Charley Anderson abandons he and force them through an economically devastating divorce proceeding.
