Hugh McVey grows up lazy and dreamy in Mudcat Landing, a mud-bank town on the Mississippi, until a stationmaster’s wife pushes him toward self-improvement. Drifting east to the Ohio town of Bidwell, he turns his idle hours to designing farm machines, and investors seize on his inventions as factories transform the place and its people.
Anderson’s novel of the Midwest’s industrial revolution, a companion piece to Winesburg, Ohio. Download the free EPUB.