A Historical Novel
Hundred Cents on the Dollar
The Unbelievable Story of Wm. H. Malone
You are the last juror.
A historical novel drawn from the scrapbook, the genealogy, and the federal record of the tax man who paid a hundred cents on the dollar and was collected at one.
A tax man. A theatre. A conviction. A pardon.
William H. Malone made Pullman pay full value, printed every hidden assessment in Cook County by street and house number, built the Pickwick Theatre, and paid his shuttered bank’s depositors a hundred cents on the dollar in the worst spring of the Depression. In 1937 the cause he served sentenced him to prison: a $59,000 bill against returns that showed $5.23. In 1944 Franklin Roosevelt pardoned him.
No two of the government’s numbers ever agreed, and his own family never agreed either. Told through his sister’s scrapbook, his granddaughter’s fifty years of genealogy, and the federal file his great-great-grandson pulled from the Archives, the book returns no verdict. That office is the reader’s.
The Government billed him fifty-nine thousand dollars. His returns showed five dollars and twenty-three cents. A jury could not hold both facts.
Every fact to convict him. Every fact to acquit him. One juror left.
The story is told through the scrapbook his sister Ethel kept, annotated decades later by his granddaughter, and assembled by his great-great-grandson from the trial docket, the clemency file, and fifty years of family genealogy. The book never returns a verdict. That part is left to you.
First presented at the centennial rededication of the Malone Fountain, Park Ridge, July 3, 2026 — the bronze drinking fountain, for man and beast, that William H. Malone gave his town in 1926.
Be first to know when the verdict opens
Out now in paperback ($24.99) and Kindle ($12.99). Get your copy, or join the list for the editions to come.