conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a plot for a book about Kane, Abel, Baron entitled Kane and Abel.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Kane and Abel (novel): The book tells the stories of two men born worlds apart.\nThey have nothing in common except the same date of birth (18 April 1906 in the book, and 1902 in the miniseries based on it) and a zeal to succeed in life.\nWilliam Lowell Kane is a wealthy and powerful Boston Brahmin while Abel Rosnovski (originally named Wladek Koskiewicz) is a Pole who was born in a situation of great poverty and eventually migrated to the United States.\nWilliam follows the steps of his father, Richard Kane, to become a successful banker.\nWhen William was still a child, Richard dies in the Titanic disaster, leaving William fatherless and heir to the Kane & Cabot bank.\nWilliam displays extraordinary discipline and intelligence as a young man at st Paul\'s School and later at Harvard.\nHis mother, Anne, marries Henry Osborne, who turns out to be interested in gambling and women.\nWilliam hates Henry from the beginning and spends most of the time at Harvard and at his best friend Mathew Lester\'s home.\nWilliam dreams of becoming the chairman of Lester\'s bank one day.\nHenry spends every last penny of Kane\'s mother\'s money on the pretext of speculation.\nAnonymous notes warn Anne (who has been impregnated by Osborne, a matter which causes William some worry -- until he finds out that he can toss Henry out easily without any money) about her husband whose real name is Victor Togna.\nShe hires a detective to find out the truth, and miscarries fatally from the shock -- after which Kane ejects Henry from his home.\nWladek Koskiewicz is born in a forest and raised by a trapper family.\nWhen he grows up and is found to have exceptional intelligence, Baron Rosnovski asks him to become a companion to his son Leon so Wladek might prove to be a competition to him.\nWladek agrees to go to the Baron\'s castle on the condition that he can bring along his elder sister Florentyna.\nSoon afterwards, World War I breaks out.\nGermans attack Poland and capture the Baron, his staff and son in his castle.\nLeon dies by the hand of a soldier.\nBefore dying, the Baron hands Wladek his silver band of authority.\nWladek realises that the Baron was his father when he finds that, like him, the Baron also had a missing nipple.\nFlorentyna is raped and killed in front of young Wladek by Russian soldiers.\nWladek was then moved to Siberia from where he manages to escape to Turkey after facing many hardships.\nThere he nearly loses his hand (a common punishment in the Middle East and in the Ottoman empire, predecessor of Turkey, before 20th century) for stealing food but is rescued by two British diplomats.\nThey transfer him to the Polish consulate from where, with their help, he migrates to America and assumes the name Abel Rosnovski.\nHe starts his life as a waiter in the Hotel Plaza, while taking night classes in English at Columbia University.\nWhile Abel is working there, Davis Leroy, owner of the Richmond group of hotels, is impressed by his work and appoints him manager of his flagship hotel.\nAbel converts the ill-managed hotel to a profit-making one and buys stock in the chain.\nDuring the Great Depression, the hotel needs a backer and Davis, unable to find one, commits suicide, leaving the remaining shares in the Richmond Group to Abel.\nBefore committing suicide, Davis mentions that Kane & Cabot was the bank that didn\'t support him.\nAbel thus plans for revenge and considers Kane his arch rival.\nThe bank gets him an anonymous backer.\nAbel assumes it to be David Maxton, owner of Stevens\' hotel.\nDuring this time, Abel catches up with his old time friend, George Novak and marries Zaphia -- both Polish emigres he had met on the ship-journey to the United States.\nAbel changes the name of the hotel from Richmond to Baron and builds up a successful hotel chain.\nBy collaborating with Henry Osborne, who had by now entered politics, Abel plans to ruin Kane and his bank.\nAbel begets a daughter, named Florentyna in memory of his dead sister (and after several attempts to have more children is told by a doctor that he was lucky to sire even one, as the poor nutrition during his childhood affected his sperm count) while Kane has a son, Richard and two daughters, Virginia and Lucy.\nAbel during World War II would save Kane\'s life in France, unaware of each other.\nHe divorces Zaphia when he returns home from the war.\nMeanwhile Kane\'s bank and Lester\'s bank merge and a provision is made that anyone who has a share of 8% can summon board meetings.\nAbel tries desperately to obtain 8% of the bank\'s stock but Kane manages to thwart his attempts.\nThey unknowingly meet each other many times throughout the novel.\nFlorentyna Rosnovski and Richard Kane happen to meet and fall in love without knowing about the rivalry between their fathers.\nThey get married despite vehement protests from their fathers and start a chain of boutique stores named Florentyna\'s.\nFinally, after Kane exposes Abel\'s dealings with Osborne and thwarts his ambition to be named Ambassador to Poland (the position goes to John Moors Cabot), Abel manages to obtain enough shares of the bank and ousts Kane from power.\nIn 1967, Kane decides to forgive his son and daughter-in-law and expresses his wish to meet them.\nBoth he and Abel observe the grand-opening of the New York branch Florentyna\'s, from outside, and they wave at each other.\nHe dies before he is able to see them and his grandson William.\nAbel then comes to know that his backer was not David Maxton, but William Kane.\nFilled with remorse, he reconciles with his daughter and son-in-law.\nAbel dies soon after, and bequeathes everything to his daughter Florentyna, except his silver band of authority, which he leaves to his grandson, whom Florentyna and Richard have named "William Abel Kane".