Their Wonted Fires - by Michael Robert Drane (Paperback)

About the Book

Their Wonted Fires is a sweeping saga that will take you from the Gilded Age's opulent mansions to its gritty slums - an immersive historical world, unvarnished storytelling, and emotional resonance make an unflinching tale.

Book Synopsis

In an age of possibility and invention, the world was what they made it.

The life of the Moran family is interwoven into their rural farming community, sharing work and persevering through hardships alongside their neighbors. But when Daniel Moran dies, his wife and children are forced to sell the farm to pay off debts in his name. Elizabeth, his daughter, is determined to do whatever she can to keep the family together while his son, Paul, looks to the burgeoning technologies of the Gilded Age as a means to provide for the family.

Elizabeth finds camaraderie in Danny McDermott and his labor union ties. Simultaneously, an old friend-turned-steel baron offers a position in his steel mill to Paul. Time and again, as the Morans make progress, they're met with loss. They endure the waves of opposition until the assault turns deadly and the family is forced to question whether they have what it takes to survive.

Their Wonted Fires is a sweeping saga that will take you from the Gilded Age's opulent mansions to its gritty slums. If you like immersive historical worlds, unvarnished storytelling, and emotional resonance, then you'll love Michael Robert Drane's unflinching tale.

Reveal what's beneath the luster of the Gilded Age. Journey through Their Wonted Fires today.

Review Quotes

With Their Wonted Fires, Michael Robert Drane uses his pen to empathetically sharpen the time-worn edges of Gilded Age Pittsburgh. Stories of growth and loss unfold within the lives of wealthy industrialists and of those whose backbreaking labor generated their wealth. Drane reserves his most emotional prose for members of the Moran family who, time and again, rose up against unimaginable odds to carve out lives and love amid smoke, steel, and struggle. As fortunes grow, losses mount, and lives bend to sometimes break from twists of fate, Drane gently carries his reader from working-class farms and humble hearths to the charged boardrooms of powerful magnates bargaining ruthlessly for the future of an industry. Amid narratives based on expertly researched history, Carnegie, Frick, Schwab, and Jones return to life in Drane's capable hands. Their Wonted Fires is a moving story of struggle that meaningfully examines whether money and power or love and family are the real riches of life.

-Virginia Montanez, author of Nothing. Everything. and a historian and columnist focused on Pittsburgh news and history.