So Big

Description:

"A masterpiece. . . . It has the completeness, [the] finality, that grips and exalts and convinces." Literary Review

Widely regarded as the master work of celebrated author and Algonquin Round Table mainstay Edna Ferber who also penned other classics including Show Boat, Giant, Ice Palace, Saratoga Trunk, and Cimarron So Big is a rollicking panorama of Chicago's high and low life at the turn of the 20th Century. Following the travails of gambler's daughter Selina Peake DeJong as she struggles to maintain her dignity, her family, and her sanity in the face of monumental challenges, this is the stunning and unforgettable novel to read and to remember by an author who critics of the 1920s and 1930s did not hesitate to call the greatest American woman novelist of her day (New York Times).

Winner of the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, So Big is a must-read for fans of contemporary novelists such Willa Cather (O Pioneers!), Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth), and Marjorie Rawlings (The Yearling)."

Brief description:

Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was a novelist, short-story writer, and playwright whose work served as the inspiration for numerous Broadway plays and Hollywood films, including Show Boat, Cimarron, Giant, Saratoga Trunk, and Ice Palace. She co-wrote the plays The Royal Family, Dinner at Eight, and Stage Door with George S. Kaufman and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel So Big.

Review Quotes:

"It has the completeness, and finality, that grips and exalts and convinces. . . . So Big is a masterpiece." - Literary Review

"A thoughtful book, clean and strong, dramatic at times, interesting always, clear-sighted, sympathetic, a novel to read and to remember." - New York Times

"Her books were . . . vivid and had a sound sociological basis. She was among the best-read novelists in the nation, and critics of the 1920s and 1930s did not hesitate to call her the greatest American woman novelist of her day." - New York Times

"Recommended reading for our times." - Washington Post

"Edna Ferber could spin a tale." - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"[A] standout." - Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Few writers can equal Edna Ferber. She writes so smoothly and brightly, with so much gusto, with so wideawake a style and so clever a selection of detail that she routs all that is common-place and casts out all that is dull." - New York Times

"There can be no question that So Big gets close to the life of its chosen bit of American soil, or that it is persuasively human in its touch." - Springfield Republican