Books: Of Wealth & Power

THE BARONS (579 pp.)—Charles Werfenbaker—Random House ($3.50).

The Barons are a clannish French family that fled the French Revolution, settled in Delaware, and rose to great wealth and power from a small gunpowder mill on Rising Sun Creek, near the small town of Susquehanna. "Neither the setting nor any of the characters ever existed," says an author's note at the beginning of this novel. But that will prevent few readers from noting a more than surface resemblance between the Barons and the Du Ponts, another clannish French family that fled the French Revolution, settled...