A great American story – a true American story – an intricate orchestration of themes intimate and grand: love and war, pioneers and politicians, medievals and moderns, charters and constitutions, names and blood, revolution and civil war, wealth and poverty, disappointment and determination, ambition and temptation, desire and deceit, high position and scandal, adultery and illegitimacy, suicide and cover-up, bitterness and recrimination and, last but not least, lawsuits and more lawsuits.The boom-bust cycle of American dynasties tends to be abrupt, dizzying and spectacular, but never more so than in this chronicle, a blend of history, psychology, literary criticism, investigation and personal testament about a once-great American clan that crashed while still climbing, written by a descendant and survivor of that clan who never dreamed his ancestry was illuminated by so many dark stars or that he would ever undertake to write about it. But it was, and he did, and this is it, a heretofore untold tale of American history and the people who made it.The text considers, among other matters, the public careers of U.S. Senator Alexander Wiley (R.-Wis., 1939-1963), U.S. Representative John J. Jenkins (R.-Wis., 1895-1909) and Justice Roujet Marshall of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin (1895-1918).