Now in November - by Josephine W Johnson (Paperback)

About the Book

Previously published: New York: Simon & Schuster, 1934.

Book Synopsis

Brilliant, evocative, poetic, savage, this Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel (1934) depicts a white, middle-class urban family that is turned into dirt-poor farmers by the Depression and the great drought of the thirties.

Like Ethan Frome, the relatively brief, intense story evokes the torment possible among people isolated and driven by strong feelings of love and hate that, unexpressed, lead inevitably to doom. Reviewers in the thirties praised the novel, calling its prose "profoundly moving music," expressing incredulity "that this mature style and this mature point of view are those of a young women in her twenties," comparing the book to "the luminous work of Willa Cather," and, with prescience, suggesting that it "has that rare quality of timelessness which is the mark of first-rate fiction."

Review Quotes

"Firmly wrought, poetic in the best sense, the product of a highly individual mind, [Now in November] is complete and self-sustaining . . . and so distinctive that one could mistake no single paragraph for the work of any other writer." -The New York Times