Sons of Fortune

This third installment in the tales of the Stevenson family covers 1854 to 1863 and brings a climax to the saga that proved for this reader the most enthralling of all. The sobriquet "Lord John" takes on a new and literal meaning as it's wearer is created Baron Cleveland after near suicidal service to the Empire during the Crimean War. Thus the Stevensons join the ranks of nobility, but as John and Nora rise to new social heights, troubles magnify. Strong, loving, noble John ceases to exist and his name and person are posessed by an impostor who while able to continue as a roaringly successful businessman takes up a navvy's sledgehammer anew only to apply it to his family relationships. One is seized with the desire to trot out to one of the Stevenson works, pick up a vagabond brick and aim it at John's head in hopes that the impact will resettle his brain back into it's proper connections. If Nora's heart was not completely broken by his betrayal, mine was, and it is up to her, while enduring the greatest mental torments of her life, to steady the helm of the family until the storm somehow passes. The focus shifts to the rising generation of Stevensons. John Junior, nicknamed "Boy", and Caspar undergo the forming experiences that will shape their lives--school, mentors, love, tests of ability, coming of age while father John heavy-handedly decrees courses for them and their eldest sister Winifred that would surely mean profound misery for them all. What's a mother to do? Should she stand by and out of her love for John allow him to make a series of colossal and devastating errors, or should she stand in his way and once again avert disaster, both personal and financial, for iron and steel made the Stevensons, in more sense than one. MacDonald introduces us to the "public" school and shows us an excercise in entrepreneurship, as well as riots in New York caused by unpopular aspects of the Civil War.