The Fifth Wheel - Olive Higgins Prouty

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Résumé :
Olive Higgins Prouty the author of Stella Dallas and Now, Voyager brings you the sequel to her wonderfully delightful novel Bobbie: General Manager. The Fifth Wheel follows Bobbie's sister Ruth as she navigates her way into young adulthood. Faced with the usual life choices of a young women of her time in her place she finds herself questioning the options she has and not wanting to be little more than a fifth wheel in her own life.

Biographie:
Olive Higgins Prouty (1882-1974) was an American novelist whose fiction explored women's emotional lives, social aspiration, and the pressures of domestic responsibility in the early twentieth century. Best known for Stella Dallas, her work frequently examined class mobility, maternal devotion, and personal resilience within changing American society. Prouty's novels remain valued for their psychological insight and measured realism....

Sommaire:
First published in 1916, The Fifth Wheel is Olive Higgins Prouty's nuanced examination of youth, social belonging, and emotional resilience in early twentieth-century America. The novel centers on Ruth, a young woman navigating the rigid expectations of social life and the quiet cruelty of exclusion. Positioned perpetually at the margins-neither fully inside nor entirely outside the social circle she inhabits-Ruth must confront both personal insecurity and the broader structures that determine acceptance and status. Prouty portrays the psychological cost of being the extra presence, the one who does not quite fit, yet refuses to withdraw. With measured prose and careful emotional observation, Prouty explores themes of self-worth, social hierarchy, and the longing for recognition. Published during a period of cultural transition, The Fifth Wheel reflects the shifting role of women in American society while remaining attentive to intimate interior conflict. This Wilder Publications edition restores the novel in a clean and carefully prepared modern format for contemporary readers....