Made in America: A Novel

New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1935. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. First edition. Faintly musty. Jacket edges rubbed with some chips and tears, jacket reverse taped in multiple places, front jacket flap creased. Page ridges faintly foxed. 1935 Hard Cover. 281 pp. Martin was a female author (writing under a male pseudonym here) and activist in social reform, including advocacy for southern African-Americans and the repeal of prohibition, and support of the Harlem Renaissance. She published stories in Harper's Weekly, The Youth's Companion, St. Nicholas Magazine, Munsey's, The Blak Cat, and Ladies' Home Journal. Pseudonym of Georgia May Madden/Mrs. Attwood R. Martin. "This novel deals with the making of an American. The author has taken an obscure alien, has set him down in the midst of American life, and has shown his growth and development from youth to manhood to old age. Put briefly, here is the success story of Sherry McNeill, shanty-Irish and poor, who rose from a narrow position of financial power and married the rich girl whom since boyhood he had admired at a distance. Then, coming to the end of his life, he found an emptiness that he had not foreseen in the things he had thought worthwhile and obtained a new knowledge of life's real values. Of course the plot is not as simple as that, for it not only teems with lively incident but introduces such intensely vital characters as Sherry's likeable father, a pathetic toper; Tipley Tipto, a vitriolic cartoonist with a heart of gold; Redding Lansing, political and financial boss and prototype of the self-made high binder; Mary Brooke, the strong, fine woman whom Sherry marries; and other minor characters. At the same time, we are given a broad panorama of American life and of social, political and economic change from the 1870's on. And we are shown how the hero was moulded by this change--how he was truly "made in America." Stressing humanistic ideals and spiritual values, the author brings her story to an impressive climax. She writes in a distinctive and often lyric style that is wholly and peculiarly her own."--jacket flap