The Moral Vision
Labour of a Lifetime
~ 171 ~
conversation. The word was passed on to a
producer, then an agent, then the American Book-
Club. Each party found the book entrancing and
worthy of a greater audience.
Finally Helen Hooven Santmyer’s book, entitled
“ ...
And Ladies of the Club,”
was nominated for the Book
Club Award in January 1984. It won the Award,
and with it a sum of over 1 million dollars.
Helen Hooven Santmyer did not seek fame or
wealth from her novel. Its topic—the story of two
Ohio families in the period between the American
Civil War and the great depression of the early
1930’s is obviously not aimed at the commercial
market. The author believed that Sinclair Lewis had
painted a false portrait of the American dream in
his novel of the 1920’s, “Main Street”. She wanted to
correct that picture. As Haynes Johnson writes in
the Washington Post:
The author was clearly not in the market for big
bucks. She obviously was motivated by saying
something in which she believed. The bare account
of how she produced the work over the years, in her
spare time, in sickness and in health, in it self
