The Green Bay Tree

A powerful story of privilege, passion, and the price of escape from society’s expectations.

Set amid the glittering excess of the Jazz Age, The Green Bay Tree explores the hidden corruption beneath wealth and respectability. In the elegant drawing rooms and manicured estates of 1920s America, young Julian Shane lives under the suffocating control of his domineering father—a man determined to mold him into a perfect reflection of ambition and status. But when Julian begins to question the empty world of appearances, he faces a dangerous choice: obedience or freedom.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Louis Bromfield exposes the emotional costs of class, money, and moral hypocrisy in this timeless novel of love, loss, and self-discovery. Written with the same psychological depth and social insight that made Early Autumn an American classic, The Green Bay Tree stands as the first volume in Bromfield’s celebrated “Escape” series—a sweeping portrait of a generation caught between tradition and change.

Rediscover one of the most brilliant voices of twentieth-century literature—a writer praised alongside F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and Edith Wharton. The Green Bay Tree is both an intimate family saga and a sharp critique of Gilded Age morality, perfect for readers who love literary fiction with emotional depth, classic romantic drama, and historical novels of manners and rebellion.