His Family: The First Pulitzer Prize Winner 1918. A 2020 Reprint by Kenneth E. Bingham

By Ernest Poole and Ernest 1880-1950 Poole

Book Overview

The story begins in the spring of 1913 with Roger Gale, a New York businessman and a widower, owner of a media monitoring service, reflecting on the changes that have come to New York since his arrival in the city as a young man from a New Hampshire farm somewhere near the time of the Civil War. He is driven by his wife's dying request to remain close to their three daughters, yet he feels very distant from them-this despite the fact that the younger two (Deborah, a school principal, and Laura) live in the family home with him, and Edith, who is married with four children, visits him regularly.The early conflicts within the family largely surround Laura's sudden announcement of her engagement to Hal Sloane, a young businessman who is generally unknown to the family, and Edith's pregnancy, as her fifth child arrives weeks before his due date, endangering her life. After the baby's birth and Laura's wedding (and subsequent honeymoon to Europe), Roger's concerns turn to the one daughter remaining at home. Deborah works constantly at her school, and spends her free hours agitating for reforms and financial support to help the families living in the tenements. Roger is disturbed by this, especially given his prejudices against the immigrant families Deborah works with, but a visit to Deborah's school changes his perspective. He takes a crippled Irish boy named John into his care, providing him with lodging and a job in Roger's news clipping office downtown.When summer arrives, the family goes to spend most of it on the old family farm in New Hampshire. At the farm, Edith's oldest son, George, is happiest, pursuing his interest in becoming a farmer someday; Edith's husband, Bruce Cunningham, spends most of his time racing around the backroads on his brand-new automobile.That following winter, Roger becomes concerned about his daughter, Deborah, whose suitor Allan Baird, a doctor and friend of the family, seems to be giving up hope of marriage. Roger conspires with his daughter Edith and her husband Bruce to pressure Deborah, and she eventually accepts Allan's proposal (with the caveat that they wait until the end of the school year, so that a long honeymoon in Europe can be enjoyed).Before the date of the wedding is reached, Bruce is struck by a taxi while standing next to his car in the street. After his death, Edith and her children are forced to return to the family home, until Roger arranges for their return to New Hampshire and the family farm. Deborah's wedding to Allan is delayed as a consequence-she asks him to wait until August. The end of July, however, brings the onset of World War I, and Roger's business loses many of its clients. As a result, he can barely afford to support the family, taking out a mortgage on the home to make ends meet, and Deborah chooses to delay her wedding again until the spring.Given the family's financial straits, Edith's children have to be removed from their expensive private school and tutored from home by Edith herself. After weeks of this, Edith resolves to sell most of her possessions, and use the money for the children's school tuition. Edith also discovers that John, the Irish boy living in the home, has tuberculosis and orders Roger to send him away, which Deborah arranges for her father.Laura, who has been largely absent from family affairs, returns suddenly to the house, arriving with luggage and refusing to see anyone but her sister, Deborah. Her husband, Hal Sloane, has made a large amount of money through war profiteering, but she has fallen in love with his business partner, an Italian, and Hal intends to divorce her, publicly or privately, as a detective has brought him "proofs" that Laura has been unfaithful to him. Roger, who initially resists the divorce, relents when he learns of his daughter's indiscretions, and she elopes with her lover soon thereafter.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B089M59ZJK
• ISBN13: 9798651471683
• Release Date: June 2020
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Dawning of the 20th Century

This is the very first of the Pulitzer Prize winners for literature. It is a portrait of life as it looked to those at the dawn of the new century. Roger is a widower with three adult daughters, each representing a different cultural norm of the time. First there is Edith, the eldest. She lives apart from Roger with her husband and five children. She represents the traditional values of family living of the time. Next, is Deborah a woman dedicated to the poor and unfortunates of the time, a social crusader pretty much in the mold of Jane Addams, more interested in making the world a better place than getting married to her doctor suitor. Last, is Laura his youngest daughter who is to become a woman of the world in the style that those looking back would recognize as the flapper girls of the 1920s. The characters are richly portrayed which is the strength of this novel.

Lovely glimpse of the past

Poole's book tells the story of aging patriarch Roger Gale and the lives of his three daughters - Laura, with her reckless abandon and zest for life; Deborah, with her fierce devotion to the tenement schoolchildren she assists; and Edith, the mother of five whose entire world revolves around her children. Roger sees their lives change - some for the better, some worse - and how it affects his own life.This is a wonderful story which reminds me at times of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, in that it encompasses the scope of life in early twentieth century New York, and the lives of the people who inhabit it. The descriptions are vivid but never too cumbersome; the characters are all very real, and the plot flies by. By the end, I came to care about what happens to these people, and found I was sorry when it was over.