Oil!

Upton Sinclair's "Oil!" is a big-spirited, big-hearted American novel about what happens when a boy starts to wonder whether the man he idolizes might be rotten underneath. James Arnold Ross, called Dad, strikes black gold in the California hills and becomes a millionaire overnight. His son Bunny adores him, and why wouldn't he? Dad is generous, vigorous, unafraid. He gives Bunny everything: a ranch, a car, a future. But as Bunny grows from boy to soldier to college student to oilman himself, he begins to see the fractures in the edifice. The strikebreakers. The bribed politicians. The sermons of a fire-and-brimstone evangelist who seems to know too much about Dad's business affairs. Sinclair, who knew something about the price of truth, wrote this novel as a companion to "The Jungle", a portrait of American industry that asks whether you can keep your soul and your fortune both. The love between father and son never wavers, which is what makes the questioning so devastating.