Word: kaolin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...which produced no gold but bred generations of chemists. The kings of Europe regularly hired alchemists not only to try to produce the elusive gold, but also to discover what made Chinese porcelain superior to European kinds. In 1709 an alchemist named Boettger found the secret (based on using kaolin, a white clay that he found in his wig powder). He made the secret known to Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. Augustus established a ceramics works at Meissen, destined to dominate European porcelain for the next 41 years...
Cleve Barfield, well-to-do kaolin mine operator, has his mind on another man's wife and an ancient legal injustice when he is jockeyed into the thankless job of captaining what looks like the town's losing battle against the river. Twenty years before, one of his Trafford in-laws had been mysteriously murdered. Later, a luckless Negro, pawning the dead man's watch, was arrested, tried, convicted and, strangely, given only a life sentence. Now a Yankee journalist named Vitner is carpetbagging in Fredericksville, poking into this old case, trying to fit the pieces...