Percy Bysshe Shelley Ray, a young newspaperman from a Midwestern town, takes the night train to New York with the manuscript of his first novel. Making the rounds of publishers, he discovers how much literary success depends on luck, while he falls in with an idealistic family of socialist reformers, including the earnest Peace Hughes, who make him question the world around him.
Howells at his most searching, mixing satire of publishing with the social conscience of the 1890s. Download the free EPUB.