Kaaran Thomas

Kaaran Thomas has been an important figure in the world of high finance for most of her life. Her magna cum laude degree from The Ohio State University came with honors in political theory. As she explains in her semi-autobiographical first novel, Trip in the Dark, she was fascinated by the fact that the world’s greatest democracy, a country whose political system was built on the “social contract” between people and their government, had developed the world’s most sophisticated laws for breaking contracts -- the bankruptcy system. Her interest fueled a lifetime devoted to corporate restructuring.

Her skill and her unique approach to problem-solving led to her first big break-- in 1987 she became one of the first female partners at Vinson & Elkins, among the world’s largest law firms. She represented some of the most prominent oil companies during the collapse of Texas’ oil-based economy, the subject of Trip in the Dark. At Vinson & Elkins she was a colleague of former Texas Governor John Connally, a towering Texan who was “shot in the back twice-once by Lee Harvey Oswald and once by a goddam bankruptcy judge.” She also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where she became friends with then-professor Elizabeth Warren. Her long list of powerful and influential contacts provides a realistic, vibrant background for her stories. Her first book has been described as giving readers the perspective of a “fly on the wall” at many of the most interesting events of the Twentieth Century -- from the assassination of President Kennedy to the bankruptcy of Enron.

In 1999, as the Texas economy recovered, she moved to Nevada, looking for a lifestyle change and suspecting that the over-developed gaming and tourism industry was headed for a bust. Her predictions came true eight years later. She joined the prominent Nevada law firm of McDonald Carano Wilson and has worked with many of the people involved with that state’s casino business.

Her work with Nevada’s businesses led to her second book, Fortune’s Trail, a fictional recreation of the trail leading many misfits to the Silver State where they created Las Vegas, the gaming capital of the United States. She worked with nationally known gaming lawyer A.J. Hicks to create a virtual tour of Las Vegas in the 1950s and ‘60s as it strived to become a tourist attraction.

Fortune’s Trail describes the development of Nevada’s gaming industry from the 1940s to 1964. It is the first of a three-part series that will follow the characters and their descendants to 2014.

Kaaran spins her tales with a unique combination of financial expertise and story-telling ability. Readers will find themselves lost in the tale of Tom Nielsen, the young bankruptcy lawyer who is the hero of Trip in the Dark, and Hattie, the Mississippi farm girl who runs away from home to join itinerant gambler Sam Wilson, and his boss Bingo Baxter, the characters in Fortune’s Trail. But they will close the books with a new appreciation of how companies boom and bust and how the economic cycle affects not just businesses but the people whose lives depend on them.