Pulitzer Prize Fiction Winner
Journey in the Dark
by Martin Flavin
Summary
Sam Braden rises from a hardscrabble Mississippi River town childhood through ambition, marriage, and business success to become a wealthy industrialist, then looks back across his life to weigh what his climb has cost him. Flavin moves between past and present to trace the moral compromises and emotional silences that accumulate behind a model career. The novel is a sober Midwestern variation on the American success story, more interested in regret than triumph.
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Historical Context & Significance
A largely forgotten novel today, it examined the American Dream's moral costs through the lens of a Midwestern businessman's life spanning the turn of the century to the Depression.