From the Ground Up

Rupert Hughes, mining the bedrock of American aspiration, chisels a miniature epic in which a suffragette-blooded heiress, Philena, spurns a dynastic betrothal to the oleaginous Carswell—thereby detonating her father’s solvency and unleashing a domino-fall of fiduciary ruin. Amid the din of steam shovels gnawing Manhattan schist, she barters a crumpled dollar for the soulful harmonica of Terence Giluley, a trench-digger whose brow is already burnished with Gatsby-grade yearning. The single bill becomes a talisman: Terence climbs from hod-carrying anonymity to blueprint-wielding contractor, while Philena—saddle-sore, horseless after a last, fatal gallop—trades silk for steno pads and night-school ink. Their trajectories intersect under gaslight chalkboards and office-wanted ads until, ledger lines and class lines both erased, he offers her a future notarized by love rather than collateral.