Three People

Three babies born on the same day, in the same town, but separated by an abyss of wealth and poverty. One crawls in a filthy cellar while the other celebrates his first birthday amid silk and chandeliers. A mile between them, and yet they will grow up to share a name, a birthday, and vastly different fates. Pliny Hastings inherits his father's liquor fortune and every advantage money can buy. Tode Mall inherits nothing but the brutal school of the streets. And somewhere between them lies Bennie Phillips, loved dearly but without the means to be celebrated as the other two are. This is a 19th century novel that takes the starkest possible premise: what if the determining factor of a life was simply where you were born? The story traces all three boys through their formative years, watching how privilege guards and corrupts, how poverty hardens and sometimes forges steel, and how chance shapes destinies that merit alone cannot explain. Alden writes with a reformer's clear eyes and a novelist's heart, refusing to let readers look away from what poverty does to children or what wealth does to souls. The novel remains quietly devastating in its insistence that these three people, equal in their humanity, will never be equal in their opportunities.