Summary
A prairie boy with sky-iron ambition drags his childhood sweetheart into the chrome maw of the metropolis, expecting ticker-tape; instead they harvest rust, hunger, and a marriage that quietly unthreads while the rent remains unpaid. Salvation arrives wearing Claire Barry’s fox-fur collar: old flame, now trophy wife to a Midas of munitions, she bankrolls Jimmy Ryder’s fever for gushing crude. One dry hole, another, then the incendiary geyser—black gold spurting like a verdict. Yet the gush drowns the last ember of the couple’s first-world innocence; Pidgie’s devotion calcifies into ghosthood, her marital status reduced to a whispered oxymoron: an invisible divorce. When Jimmy finally eavesdrops on the phrase, the fortune he clawed from the bowels of the earth turns to ash in his mouth, and the closing shot lingers on a man bargaining with absolution at a door that may already be locked.
Synopsis
Jimmy Ryder, full of dreams of conquering the world, marries Pidgie and together they go to the city to make their fortune, but fortune refuses to smile on them and they're reduced to living in poverty. One day Jimmy encounters Claire Barry, an old friend who retains an unrequited love for him, although she has since married the wealthy John Barry. Claire persuades her husband to finance Jimmy's oil-drilling explorations in return for a percentage of the profits. His first attempt fails, but Pidgie continues to lend her sympathy and support to her husband even though she is hurt at the growing attachment between Jimmy and Claire. After another attempt, Jimmy finally realizes his dream of wealth and success, until one day he overhears Pidgie comment that she has been living an invisible divorce. Finally realizing that the one thing he lacks is the consuming love he shared with Pidgie, he begs her forgiveness.
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