The Big Town

Ring W. Lardner's The Big Town follows a dryly comic Midwestern husband whose unexpected inheritance from his wife Ella's stepfather sends the family from modest South Bend into a whirl of money, ambition, and social pretension. With Ella and her sister Katie eager to trade restraint for glamour, the narrator watches their hopes for dresses, parties, and a suitable husband for Katie collide with the awkward realities of class and small-town life. A disastrous social gathering and a disappointing resort summer only sharpen their hunger for something bigger, until Ella insists that New York City offers the "Life and fun" they crave. In the city, the family's comic reinvention unfolds aboard a crowded train and inside an expensive hotel, where wartime restrictions, impersonal service, and expensive habits expose their outsider status. The narrator's sharp, self-mocking voice turns every encounter into social satire, from sparring with the urbane Francis Griffin to bluffing his way into the confidence of Lady Perkins with a fake dog illness. As Katie and Ella are dazzled by New York society and men like Griffin and aviator Bob Codd, the novel blends romance, deception, and class comedy into a lively portrait of Americans chasing status in the big town. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.