A hazard of new fortunes

Basil March jumps at the chance to leave his boring job to become the founding editor of a new magazine. But this also means that he must leave comfortable Boston for the confusion and chaos of 1890s New York. As March and his wife try to find a decent place to live, he also struggles to find contributors and readers. The Marches are quickly drawn into the tangled lives of their fellow New Yorkers: a bitter German socialist who lost his hand fighting for the Union in the Civil War, a colonel nostalgic for slavery, Bohemian artists, increasingly desperate workers on strike, a slick publicist, a starchy society family, and a wealthy farmer-turned-speculator who hurts those he loves most. Born in Ohio, William Dean Howells was a highly successful magazine editor before he became a full-time writer. He believed that this midlife novel, which draws on his own family’s experiences moving from Boston to New York, was his “most vital work.” Mark Twain , whom Howells helped early in his career, called A Hazard of New Fortunes “the exactest & truest portrayal of New York and New York life ever written … a great book.”