From the inside jacket covers-- The ashes floated away, a faint sprinkling of dust on the blue glint of the Mediterranean.....It is 1968, the end of the saga of Tom Jordache, the murdered hero of "Rich Man, Poor Man." In the ship he had captained, now piloted by his son, Wesley, are Kate, his wife of five days, his brother and sister, Rudolph Jordache and Gretchen Burke, and his best friend and partner, Bunny Dwyre. Up in the bow, Dwyre stood in the little breeze of thier passage, watching the coastline, white mansions, old walls, green pines, grow nearer in the brilliant light of the morning sun. Rich man's weather, Dwyre remembered. So that book ends. So its sequel, the long-awaited Beggarman Thief, begins, with a father to be avenged, lives to be continued in one way or another, careers to be fashioned, guilt to be atoned for, hatred to wound, love to heal. A new generation takes center stage in America and Europe, in a time of violence and peril; new bonds are formed, between cousin and cousin, sister and brother, strangers and lovers; there is ecstacy and terror, victory and defeat. The Jordaches survive. The canvas is as rich as it is wide and the characterizations as wonderful as a master storyteller can make them in a novel that stands completely on its own while it enhances the storied begun in --"Rich Man, Poor Man".
