Early in the 19th Century, expanding markets for Pennsylvania's anthracite coal created a smaller scale prelude to the later California gold rush. It was an era as wild as any the West ever knew--yet it has been rarely depicted in history. A native of the Coal Region and avid student of its history, the author has attempted to provide an accurate sense of this particular time and place in a story probing the cost of unrestrained ambition. Many of those who flocked to the region were ambitiously ruthless in pursuit of this "black gold." Captain Isaac Schlussel is typical of the breed, though he approaches his goal of wealth by supplying the blasting powder needed to develop deep mining rather than by grubbing in the earth. Then, Schlussel is felled by an assassin's bullet. His greed has provided a multitude of suspects who are introduced in chapters which flash back and forth in time to reveal his history and his obsession with the beautiful woman who is both his wife and the unintentional source of his downfall.