The Silver Spooner

Book excerpt: From a New York Times–bestselling author: A novel of postwar American dreams and an Oklahoma ranching dynasty. A kingpin rancher in eastern Oklahoma, Earl Kruger built the largest cattle operation in the state. Admired for his ambition and hated for his ruthlessness, he was the last of a breed that rose to wealth and power out of the desolation of the dust bowl. When he dies, his only son, A.G., a “silver spooner”, privileged but unprepared, discovers that the tough old man cast a long shadow. And A.G. isn’t the only one under its influence. So is Ramsey Hogan. A.G.’s best friend and surrogate brother, the orphan grew up on the Krugers’ Sunrise Ranch. As indebted to the family as he is lost, Ramsey is searching for his own identity on a destructive path that takes him to Hollywood and back again. But A.G.’s wife, Claire, is defining herself by the Kruger legacy. Beautiful, calculating, and as driven as her late father-in-law, she’s determined to grab hold of a tycoon’s life and never let go. In a changing world of wildly clashing values, they struggle to play out their lives, caught between the claims of past and present, the demands of friendship and marriage, and the promise of hope and the burden of dreams, in this saga by a PEN/Hemingway Award–winning author.