Poor White: A Town Industrialised

In the sleepy Ohio town of Bidwell, everyone knows their place: farmers, shopkeepers, and the slow, kind boy who keeps to himself. Hugh McVey arrives with nothing but a dream of machines that will lighten a farmer's work—and a strange, brilliant mind for how they should be built. As his inventions turn Bidwell into a bustling industrial town, Hugh rises from ragged outsider to celebrated figure. But factories bring workers, money, and envy, and the quiet life he wanted soon becomes a world of strikes, violence, and broken trust—even between Hugh and the spirited Clara Butterworth, the woman he married. Rendered in vivid, present-day English, this retelling keeps Sherwood Anderson's compassion and his clear-eyed warning about the price of progress. For readers who love small-town stories, historical American fiction, and novels of men and women caught between heart and ambition. Part of Timeless Classics.