The Auction Block

A Long Island family with a beautiful daughter comes to New York to sell her — into a chorus line first, then into the best marriage the mother can arrange, the auction block being the point of the title. Beach joined the Klondike rush at twenty-two, struck nothing, and mined the experience instead; here he leaves the North for Broadway, and the mother is one of the most convincing monsters in American fiction. Twenty plates of painting by Sloan, Bellows, and their contemporaries carry the city's bars, stages, and harbor lights that Beach's Broadway runs on.