In the wake of World War I, Alice Adams finds herself being pursued by a gentleman of higher social class. She and her family try various schemes to keep their inferior status a secret.

This novel follows several members of an American family, the Berglunds, as well as their close friends and lovers, as complex and troubled relationships unfold over many years. The book follows them through the last decades of the twentieth century and concludes near the beginning of the Obama administration. The Berglunds are the middle class suburban family that the neighbors just love to talk about. Walter, the successful and doting husband, and...

The wife of a successful lawyer in 1930s Kansas City, India Bridge, tries to cope with her dissastisfaction with an easy, though empty, life.