The Almighty Dollar

Summary

A death-bed covenant becomes the spark that ignites a slow-burning fuse of obsession: Nan Lorimer, bound by her mother’s final exhalation, swears to shepherd the incandescent Masie through Manhattan’s electric labyrinth. Masie, however, drifts toward the sulfurous charisma of Dr. Thornton—part healer, part haruspex—whose whispered diagnoses feel more like incantations than medicine. Their clandestine nocturnes through the city’s subterranean arteries climax when a shuddering subway derailment hurls Masie into the ore-dusted arms of John Harwood, a tycoon whose wealth was blasted from the bowels of the earth. Marriage follows with meteoric swiftness, yet the same metallic hunger that once lured Harwood into mines now diverts his gaze from the marital bed toward ledgers and lodes. Abandoned in gilded rooms that echo like catacombs, Masie rekindles her dalliance with Thornton, and the triangle begins to twist like a knife in a wound that refuses to clot. Loyalties calcify, truths detonate, and the Almighty Dollar—never seen on screen yet palpable in every frame—looms as the unnamed deity before whose altar both love and honor are sacrificed.

Synopsis

As Nan Lorimer's mother lies dying, she makes Nan promise to take care of her younger sister Masie. Unfortunately, Masie falls for the shady Dr. Thornton and travels secretly around New York City to meet him. One night she is rescued during a subway accident by wealthy John Harwood, a miner, who falls in love with her and marries her. Although the two are deeply in love, John begins to neglect his wife for his mining business, and soon Masie begins to see Dr. Thornton again. Complications ensue.