The two sons and one daughter of Axel Jordache, a small town-on-the-Hudson baker, form the triangle on which ["Rich Man, Poor Man"]—as on an armature—is unshakably constructed…. Tom starts out as a ne'er-do-well, Rudolph as the priggish mother's bright hope, and Gretchen as the renegade. A vast, shifting circle of acquaintances, friends, lovers, wives and husbands springs up around them. The directions they take and the goals they actually reach differ drasti...