Pulitzer Number One: His Family: 1918

First of all, my obnoxious plan to read all the Pulitzers does not merit the lovely comments I received on my last post about it. But the comments were lovely, indeed. Who knows how far I'll get with this, but I know I won't get very far this summer. I'll try, though. It may take me years. I may just quit.

So I'm just beginning His Family by Ernest Poole. It won the first Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. No award was given in 1917. It's takes place in New York City at the turn of the century. It's about a widower who is struggling to get to know his three grown daughters better before he dies. He sees how "modern" they are and how times are changing. He's most aware,though, of the changes in the city. He notices and dwells upon the city's evolution, from the stories told to him by people of his parents' generation, to how it was when he first moved there as a young man (horse-drawn carriages in the streets), to what it's becoming at the time the story takes place. Highrises are going up in his neighborhood, minority populations are growing (and by minority he means Italians and Jews), and his daughters go out dancing at night. It should be interesting to see where this goes.