2020 Reprint of the 1924 Edition. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and widely considered to be Edna Ferber's greatest achievement, So Big is a classic novel of turn-of-the-century Chicago. A rollicking panarama of Chicago's high and low life, this stunning novel follows the travails of gambler's daughter Selina Peake DeJong as she struggles to maintain her dignity, her family, and her sanity in the face of monumental challenges.
Reviews:
"It has the completeness, and finality, that grips and exalts and convinces. . . . So Big is a masterpiece." (Literary Review)
"A thoughtful book, clean and strong, dramatic at times, interesting always, clear-sighted, sympathetic, a novel to read and to remember." (New York Times)
"[A] standout." (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
"Recommended reading for our times." (Washington Post)
"Her books were . . . vivid and had a sound sociological basis. She was among the best-read novelists in the nation, and critics of the 1920s and 1930s did not hesitate to call her the greatest American woman novelist of her day." (New York Times)
"For sheer readability few writers can equal Edna Ferber. She writes so smoothly and brightly, with so much gusto, with so wideawake a style and so clever a selection of detail that she routs all that is common-place and casts out all that is dull." (New York Times)
"There can be no question that So Big gets close to the life of its chosen bit of American soil, or that it is persuasively human in its touch." (Springfield Republican)