In 1880 Jennie Gerhardt and her mother scrub floors in the principal hotel of Columbus, Ohio, to feed a struggling German family. Jennie’s gentle nature draws the attention of a kindly senator and later of Lester Kane, heir to a carriage fortune, and Dreiser follows what it costs her to love outside marriage in a society that judges women harshly.
Dreiser’s second novel and one of his most compassionate, a landmark of American realism. Download the free EPUB.