What a Woman Must Overcome for Success in Finance

I’ve written several novels including <ASIN: 0985314427> or <ASIN: B008FD5I4C> (Kindle); <ASIN: 0985314435> or <ASIN: B008RBPH7A> (Kindle) and <ASIN: 0985314451> or <ASIN: B009LNPE94>. I have recentlyreleased <ASIN: B009LNPE94>, in which I wanted to show what a woman has to go through to achieve success in the decidedly man's world of finance.  Here’s an excerpt:  

"Thank you, Mr. Landy. I've asked for this meeting in order to present some ideas that I think can be useful to the firm and, at the same time, demonstrate my capability to move into a position in investment banking."

"That's right," he replied, "you told me you were studying finance."

Deborah was encouraged by his having remembered and began to outline her thinking.

"Say, I've got tickets to the football game down at Princeton tomorrow," he interrupted. Same firm or not, you just have to bend the rules when a girl looks like this, he thought. "How would you like to drive down there with me, maybe make a whole weekend of it?"

"Thank you, but I've got plans already," she said politely, emphasizing by her tone that she had no intention of smudging the line drawn between a business and a social relationship. "The matter I've come to discuss could open up a major new source of revenue for our firm. I've done extensive research and come up with a list of excellent companies that are ripe for acquisition."

"Have the companies told you that?" he asked grumpily.

"They don't yet know that we're looking at them, nor would they until we've located the right client to acquire them. Some of the acquisitions might well have to be made against the wishes of the target company's management."

"How's that?"

"Our client would publicly offer to buy the target company's shares directly from the stockholders."

"That's a messy business which makes an awful lot of enemies, Miss Crown." He grinned patronizingly. "You haven't been involved in the financial world very long. Let me explain that that sort of thing just isn't done."

Deborah gritted her teeth. Landy sounded exactly like so many English bankers she had heard, exactly like Leslie, despite the gap of three thousand miles and a different culture and accent: "That's not the done thing, my dear, not done at all."

A wide smile exposed Landy's white teeth and boyish charm. "If you're sincerely interested in learning more about investment banking, why not come down to Princeton with me for the weekend?" he winked. "There are some things I'd love to teach you."

You're no different from Corcoran or any of the others, she thought with disgust. On the surface, better bred. But underneath, no different, no different at all.

"Mr. Landy," she concluded with a tight smile, "I don't need personal instruction to know that the purpose of an investment bank is to make money for the clients and for the partners. This proposal does that— they'll make money, lots of it. If you should happen to change your mind about the direction in which you wish to take your division, I'd be glad to speak further to you."

Read more:  <ASIN: 0985314427> or <ASIN: B008FD5I4C> (Kindle); <ASIN: 0985314435> or <ASIN: B008RBPH7A> (Kindle) and <ASIN: 0985314451> or <ASIN: B009LNPE94>, <ASIN: 098531446X> or <ASIN: B00CF3SD3G> (Kindle).

What Is the Appeal to Readers of a Grand Saga?

         I've written a number of novels, including A Question of Proof or A Question of Proof (Kindle); Star Time: New Version & New Introduction or Star Time (Kindle) and Birthright or Birthright (Kindle). In writing my novel DEEDS Deeds or Deeds (Kindle), I wanted to explore how events over generations and secrets buried in the past have repercussions in the present. That was true also of my novel BIRTHRIGHT. I believe there are still readers who enjoy savoring what I hope I have delivered in each: a satisfying story on the scale of real life.

         Here’s an excerpt from DEEDS of the moments after Abe Weintraub has taken Ralph, his son-in-law, and Gail, his daughter, on a tour of the Lower East Side where he and his family and Ralph’s family, too, first settled in America; the tour reveals so much about his roots that Ralph never imagined:

         As it once had to Raphael, it came also now to Ralph that he somehow shared with the Jews who had struggled to survive in and then to transcend this neighborhood a common culture and values passed down by generations of Jews, among them Raphael and Sally [Ralph’s grandparents], who were endowed with the strength to brave the journey here and seek a better life. They knew no one. They may have not have been able speak the language. And yet they strove and succeeded. One of their beliefs, Ralph mused, was that life rewarded virtues like honoring one’s father. In that regard he had fulfilled the mandate of his Jewish heritage. In contrast, his father had treated that blind loyalty as gullibility, exploitable when expedient. Had his parents, Raphael and Sally, set his father that example by abandoning their Jewish identities? . . .
         Gail asked Ralph whether he felt saddened or disillusioned by what he had learned about his grandmother’s true background and his grandfather’s original homeland.
         “At first, like a kid who’s had his candy stolen. But then I realized that if they had been accepted where they came from, they never would have put themselves through hell to travel here. They came because of the opportunities, believing that they could do anything here if they tried hard enough, even re-invent themselves into brand-new people. It makes me feel kind of proud. My grandparents did whatever they had to do to make their way.”
         “They couldn’t change the important things about themselves. That’s what my father seemed to think.”
         Ralph nodded. “And maybe it took them a long while to understand what was important and what wasn’t.” He reflected on that for a moment and then said, “I don’t feel more Jewish or less Christian now than before. What I really feel is richer, in a way I hadn’t expected.”