Oil!

Set against the early twentieth-century oil boom in Southern California, the novel follows James Arnold Ross Jr., nicknamed "Bunny," from boyhood to young adulthood as he watches his father, J. Arnold Ross ("Dad"), build a petroleum empire. Through Bunny's eyes, the narrative traces the social, political, and moral costs of oil wealth from 1912 to 1924.

The story opens with Dad and 13-year-old Bunny racing down a highway. Dad is a big, round-faced former teamster and general-store owner turned oil operator. Bunny is a restless, brown-eyed boy, homeschooled so he can learn the business firsthand. They head to Beach City to lease an entire city block at Prospect Hill, where a massive oil strike has sent land values soaring, but the lot owners cannot agree on terms. During the chaotic meeting, Bunny meets Paul Watkins, a 16-year-old runaway. Paul has fled his father Abel's fanatical Pentecostal household in the remote village of Paradise, rejecting holy rolling and speaking in tongues. He refuses Bunny's offer of money with fierce pride. When the meeting collapses in a fistfight, Dad leaves in disgust, and Bunny searches for Paul but cannot find him. The encounter marks Bunny permanently; Paul becomes a moral lodestone he will pursue for years.

Dad signs a lease on the north slope of Prospect Hill and drills the Ross-Bankside No. 1, bribing officials and sharing profits with suppliers to secure cooperation. The well comes in at 16,000 barrels a day. Bunny then persuades his father to go quail hunting near Paradise, secretly hoping to help the Watkins family, who face foreclosure on their goat ranch. While hunting, Bunny discovers oil on his shoe, brought to the surface by an earthquake. Dad buys the ranch for $3,700 under the pretense of wanting a summer camping place and quietly acquires 12,000 surrounding acres. To deflect Abel's relentless proselytizing, Dad invents a fake religion, "the Church of the True Word." Bunny is tormented by the deception but consoles himself that his original motive was to help the family.

When Ruth Watkins, Paul's 13-year-old sister, is beaten by her father for reading Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, Bunny insists Dad intervene. Dad concocts a separate theological scheme, telling Abel that Paul may carry a "Third Revelation" of freedom and truth. Paul's brother, Eli Watkins, now 18 and already known as a faith healer, seizes the idea and claims the revelation for himself, launching a preaching career that grows into a statewide phenomenon. Paul returns to Paradise and works as Dad's boss carpenter, having been educated by the late Judge Minter. Dad is deeply impressed by Paul's intelligence.

One of the "Big Five" oil corporations begins drilling near Paradise, giving Dad cover to announce his own plans. During drilling of the Ross Junior-Paradise No. 1, a roughneck named Joe Gundha drowns in the well. On Christmas Eve, the well blows out and catches fire. Dad dynamites the hole shut and tells Bunny, "You're a millionaire ten times over." The fire proves they sit atop an immense reservoir, and Paradise transforms into a booming oil town.

As World War I drives oil prices skyward, the workers strike for the eight-hour day. Dad tries to persuade the Petroleum Employers' Federation to negotiate but is outvoted. He keeps his wells idle rather than bring in strikebreakers, yet must pay Federation assessments that fund armed guards. Paul, now a strike leader, confronts Bunny: "You're soft... You've always had everything you wanted." The government orders the workers back with promises of reform, and Paul is drafted and shipped to Siberia as part of the American intervention against the Bolshevik Revolution.

Bunny has a passionate affair with Eunice Hoyt, the bold daughter of a financier, but the relationship crumbles. He trains as a military officer but never sees combat. After the war, Dad merges with Vernon Roscoe, the biggest independent operator on the coast, forming Ross Consolidated, a $70 million corporation.

At Southern Pacific University, Bunny befriends Daniel Webster Irving, a history instructor who questions American intervention in Russia. A smuggled letter from a soldier serving with Paul reveals American troops propping up corrupt Russian governments in Siberia. Paul returns gaunt and sick, now a committed Bolshevik who declares the army was "kidnapped" by Wall Street bankers to break the Russian workers' revolution. Bunny publishes a radical student paper, The Investigator, provoking a campus scandal. Irving is fired. Bunny befriends Rachel Menzies, a principled Jewish Socialist from a clothing workers' family.

At Roscoe's Gothic country estate, the Monastery, Bunny meets Viola "Vee" Tracy, a famous movie star, and they begin a passionate affair. Roscoe tells Dad he needs $200,000 to buy the Republican presidential nomination for Senator Harding of Ohio in exchange for naval oil reserve leases. Harding wins. Bunny is horrified but cannot oppose his father. When Rachel criticizes an anti-Bolshevik propaganda film Vee has made, Vee slaps her, and the incident makes headlines.

A second oil strike collapses in defeat. Paul and others are arrested on charges of criminal syndicalism, a legal category used to prosecute those accused of advocating radical political or industrial change. Vee secretly arranges Paul's bail. She lures Bunny to New York and Canada, but the workers' defeat haunts him.

Bunny graduates and plans to go undercover as a factory worker, but Dad falls seriously ill. Dad offers Bunny $1,000 a month for non-violent educational work, and Bunny accepts, hiring Rachel to edit a youth Socialist paper, The Young Student. Dad and Roscoe secure the Sunnyside naval reserve leases through bribes funneled via a Canadian corporation.

Dad marries Mrs. Alyse Olivier, a Spiritualist widow, and gives Bunny $1 million in Ross Consolidated stock. They part in Paris. Dad dies of pneumonia shortly after. Bunny returns to find Roscoe has seized control of the estate: Over $10 million in securities have vanished, and fire insurance companies refuse to pay claims on the Paradise field, alleging arson.

Paul formally joins the Communist Workers' party and travels to Moscow, returning as an apostle of world revolution. Eli stages a spectacular disappearance from a beach, claiming angels kept him afloat for 35 days; his Angel City Tabernacle fills to overflowing. Vee breaks with Bunny and marries a Romanian prince. Bunny proposes to Rachel while scouting a site for a labor college near Mount Hope.

On election night 1924, a mob of 50 armed men raids a hall of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) where Paul is attending a gathering. They beat everyone inside with clubs and iron pipe. Paul is found with a fractured skull and lies in a hospital muttering Russian revolutionary slogans while the radio blares jazz and election returns. Eli visits and later broadcasts that Paul repented on his deathbed, a claim Ruth calls "a lie." Paul dies. Ruth, shattered by grief, drowns herself in the discovery well, the same well where Joe Gundha died years before. They are buried side by side at Paradise.

The novel closes with Bunny and Rachel committed to building the labor college at Mount Hope, while acknowledging the "evil Power" of oil wealth that destroyed Ruth, Paul, and Dad, "crippling the bodies of men and women, and luring the nations to destruction by visions of unearned wealth, and the opportunity to enslave and exploit labor."