Summary
In the soot-laced autumn of a forgotten New England mill hamlet, Tommy Buckman—scion of a five-and-dime empire, reeking of gin and flop sweat—tumbles off the north-bound express like a spent cigarette. His father’s ultimatum rattles in his breast pocket: secure a storefront in Winton or forfeit the Buckman name. Within hours the prodigal collapses into a jail cell, striped by moonlight, disinherited by telegram. Salvation arrives wearing Nina Potter’s calico nerves and hawk-sharp eyes; she springs him from the slammer, drags him through streets perfumed with woodsmoke and failure, and parks him behind the counter of her father’s threadbare emporium. Tommy—once a gold-bricking lounge lizard—learns the metrics of mercantile grace: how to fold paper sacks into crisp origami, how to coax pennies from mill-workers’ fists, how to tilt a window display so that the light sings. He becomes the store’s pulse, then its brain, then its voice—until old Buckman’s chrome-plated cathedral of commerce clangs open across the cobblestones, a capitalist excommunication. Tommy retaliates with ragtag brilliance: loss-leader licorice, midnight deliveries by bicycle, a chorus of shopgirls harmonizing prices like auctioneers. Receipts multiply like fruit flies; the elder Buckman’s ledgers hemorrhage red. When the tycoon strides into town, fur-collared and apoplectic, he finds his heir presiding over a confetti storm of ticker tape, a populist king in a paper crown. The father’s roar collapses into a chuckle; the chain store is loaded back onto boxcars, and Tommy—still reeking, now of turpentine and triumph—claims Nina’s hand while the town band tootles through the square.
Synopsis
Tommy Buckman, the ne'er-do-well son of dime store magnate John Buckman, is given one last chance to succeed by surveying a possible location in New England for the opening of another store in his father's chain. Arriving in the town of Winton, Tommy lands in jail and, disowned by his father, is bailed out by Nina Potter, whose father owns the only dime store in town. Tommy accepts a job as a delivery boy in the Potter store and soon rises to the post of general manager. When Buckman opens the store across the street, Tommy, now an adroit manager, corners the market. Old Buckman is sent for, and when he arrives to discover that his own son has beaten him in business, he consents to Tommy's marriage to Nina and withdraws his store from the town of Winton.
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