[Taylor Caldwell] has pursued through sixteen novels almost every aspect of the rise of those multi-millionaire families in the United States Theodore Roosevelt called malefactors of great wealth. The fact that her great-uncle once owned all of the railroads in Scotland and that her grandmother was half Irish has had a great deal to do with the subject of her newest book, "Never Victorious, Never Defeated." This long and absorbing novel is by no means a pursuit of a wornout vein; the author has discovered a new gold mine in the intramural conflicts of four generations of a prolific family of Pennsylvania railroad builders fighting to extend their lines north and west. It is a complex story involving more than twenty principal characters, as well as striking theories on immigration, labor unions, socialism, and war….

In the background of this tumultuous railroad novel there is the history of...