A Master's Degree

On a dusty Kansas morning in the early 1900s, two young men arrive at Sunrise College from opposite worlds. Victor Burleigh, a rough-edged son of the plains, carries nothing but ambition and the grit of hard Kansas winters. Vincent Burgess steps off the train with Eastern polish and the confidence of inherited culture. Between them stands Elinor Wream, the president's niece, and the question of who will win her regard becomes the surface battleground for something deeper: a clash between the raw promise of the American frontier and the settled Certainty of Eastern intellectual tradition. Dean Lloyd Fenneben watches these forces collide in his college, fighting to build something lasting from prairie winds and idealistic youth. This is a novel about what it costs to climb, and whether the mountain is worth the ascent.