1914. Read, an Arkansas author, begins his novel: A cold northwest wind swept the streets. March, scolding dame of the year, shrieked her complaint. In the somber-clad throng that crowded the cobbled thoroughfare, no countenance seemed illumined with happiness. Slaves emancipated for the night, and worse than slaves, women of the sweat shops, struggled homeward to sleep, to awake with the ever-just sigh against fate, and then to return to the galleys of the soul. Dwarfed and mirthless youth, disappointed middle life and old age, victims of deadening toil and cheated of the balm of philosophy, all struggling to pull apart from one another, to be individuals, and yet each one but a type in a vast herd of anxiety and discontent. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.