The Valley of Decision - (Regional) by Marcia Davenport (Paperback)

About the Book

Pittsburgh author Marcia Davenport's absorbing and complex chronicle of a family's fortunes from the economic panic of 1873 through the dramatic rise of American industry and trade unionism, through waves of immigration, class conflict, natural disaster, World War I, to Pearl Harbor.

Book Synopsis

Originally published in 1942, The Valley of Decision was an instant success, and its story of four generations of the Scott family--owners and operators of a Pittsburgh iron and steel works--has since captured the imagination of generations of readers. Absorbing and complex, it chronicles the family's saga from the economic panic of 1873 through the dramatic rise of American industry and trade unionism, through waves of immigration, class conflict, natural disaster, World War I, and Pearl Harbor. In 1945 it was made into a major motion picture starring Greer Garson and Gregory Peck. This reissue features a new foreword by noted steel industry historian John Hoerr, author of And the Wolf Finally Came, who places the novel in context as a classic depiction of twentieth-century America.

From the Back Cover

The novel is set in Pittsburgh but, as The Saturday Review of Literatures commented, it is 'a cavalcade of America, industrially, socially, and domestically.'

Review Quotes

A magnificent novel about human beings who spring full-featured and living from its pages. . . . It is not too much to call The Valley of Decision a real American saga.-- "New York Times"

A vibrant and realistic novel of America . . . as strong, bright, and finely tempered as the steel of which it tells.-- "Philadelphia Inquirer"

Entwined with family histories, Marcia Davenport has re-created the industrialization of Pittsburgh from the post-Civil War era to the 1940s. Beginning with the Scottish steel barons to the Irish, Czech, and Slovak immigrants who fought for unionization, she shows what made Pittsburgh synonymous with steel, smog, and struggle. It feels like reality, not the alternate reality that fiction is presumed to be. Her characters are as real as the streets and neighborhoods she knows by name.-- "Samuel Hazo"

In the vast scope and crystalline detail of The Valley of Decision, Marcia Davenport has achieved a truly monumental work which never for one instant loses its quality of stirring human interest.-- "Book Review Digest"

Marcia Davenport's The Valley of Decision stands foremost in my memory of the books about Pittsburgh that I liked best of all.-- "David McCullough, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and two-time National Book Award winner"

About the Author

Marcia Davenport is the author of four other books and a biography of Mozart. Her autobiography, Too Strong for Fantasy, was published in 1967.