The Grafters

The narrative traces the growth of a Western boomtown around a railroad water stop and the land deals and ambitious entrepreneurs that create a junto, intersecting with urban Eastern social circles. Through episodic chapters the plot follows political machinations, corporate manipulation, electioneering, gerrymandering, legal maneuvers, and conspiracies that bind businessmen and politicians, while individuals — including women who intervene — navigate loyalties, ambition, and conscience. Scenes alternate between frontier profiteering and metropolitan society to examine graft's mechanisms, the making and breaking of public trust, and the human costs of power-seeking.