Disaster. Perseverance. Disappointment. Redemption. North American Financial Holdings Inc.’s ascent from abstract business plan to the state’s fifth-largest financial institution in less than a year has the narrative arc of a blockbuster movie, and we’ve provided the storyboards.

Steve Miller, 56, was a young employee at Biltmore House when brothers George and Bill Cecil Sr. split the Asheville estate their grandfather George Vanderbilt built at the end of the 19th century.

As his black Chrysler rolls out of Little Washington across the bridge over the Pamlico River, Reggie Fountain chatters like a jackhammer into his cellphone.

Nearly three years after the credit crisis crippled the economy, businesses are on the mend, as evidenced by the Top 75, Business North Carolina’s annual ranking of the largest publicly traded companies based in the state.

In June, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. agreed to buy RBC Bank USA, the Raleigh-based retail-banking arm of Royal Bank of Canada, for approximately $3.5 billion.

Unifi Inc. opened an $8 million recycling plant in Yadkinville to meet demand for its Repreve polyester yarn.

Jim Fain doesn’t have big shoes to fill.

“Because we don’t want to.”

Ed Martin, our senior contributing editor, did it once again, this year winning the gold prize for best magazine feature in The Alliance of Area Business Publications Editorial Excellence Awards.

President Obama came to town a few weeks ago, and much levity ensued.

Illegal immigration can do funny things to politicians.