Years of Grace

Spanning roughly forty years of Chicago life, this novel follows Jane Ward from a sheltered girlhood in the 1890s through marriage, motherhood, and middle age. As a young woman Jane gives up an early love to do what her family expects, and Margaret Ayer Barnes traces the quiet cost of that choice as manners loosen and a new century reshapes the world around her. Her daughters make freer decisions than she ever could, and Jane watches with a mix of envy and unease. Warm, observant, and unsentimental about the compromises asked of respectable women, the book won the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available to read and download.