Albert Crosby, a shrewd and industrious Yankee gentleman travels to Chicago in a prairie schooner with $10,000 worth of mercantile goods to pursue his lifelong quest for financial independence. His business venture becomes so successful family members are summoned to the Midwest to help him. Despite his financial success, Albert's personal life deteriorates because his wife, Margaret, refuses to remain in Chicago. During the Civil War, Albert manufactures medicinal alcohol and becomes a millionaire. He joins a colorful militia group and is befriended by President Lincoln. After the war, Albert assumes the ownership of his cousin's opera house. Following extensive refurbishing, it becomes a victim of the disastrous Chicago Fire of 1871. His losses are staggering, but he manages to salvage his brewery and begin anew. Eventually, Albert divorces his estranged wife and marries Matilda and then plunges into bankruptcy. After years of hard work, many challenges and setbacks, Albert returns to his native Brewster on Cape Cod and builds an ostentatious mansion. With integrity and innate ingenuity, Albert manages to triumph over many adversities and achieves happiness with his second wife, in "Tawasentha," the castle of his dreams.

That one could “walk drishod on the backs” of schools of salmon, shad, and other fishes moving up Atlantic coast rivers was a not uncommon kind of description of their migratory runs during early Colonial times. Accounts tell of awe-inspiring numbers of spawners pushing their way upriver, the waters “running silver,” to complete life cycles that once replenished critical marine fisheries along the Eastern Seaboard. This is a hugely important, fascinating, and unique look at the fish of North America whose history and life-cycles and conservation challenges are poorly understood. Despite these primordial abundances, over the centuries these stocks were so stressed that virtually all are now severely depressed, with many biologically or commercially extinct and some simply forgotten. Running Silver will tell the story of the past, present and future of these sea-river fish. This important book will elevate public consciousness of the contrasts between the historical and the present to show the enormous legacy that has already been lost and to help inspire efforts to save what remains. Drawing on the author's thirty-year career as a scientist and educator with a passion for the native river fish of the North East, Running Silver tells the story of these endangered fish with a mix of research, historical accounts, anecdotes, personal experience, interviews, and images.