The five novels in this collection of the works of Edna Ferber are So Big, Show Boat, Cimarron, Saratoga Trunk, and Giant. Each of the five novels are complete and unabridged. What a deal!

The daughter of a Hungarian-born father and Milwaukee-native mother, Edna Ferber spent much of her childhood years in small midwestern towns. Her family, while not observant, always closed their store for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, never missing a Passover seder. Ferber felt that being Jewish was to be subjected to anti-Semitism. In 1917 she wrote Fanny Herself, based largely on the experiences she had while growing up in Appleton, Wisconsin and later in Chicago, Illinois. Her's is a tale of a young Jewish girl trying to become a successful businesswoman in early twentieth century America without denying her Jewish roots or subverting her social conscience. This newly abridged, four cassette, six hour audiobook edition (wonderfully narrated by Suzanne Toren) will introduce a whole new generation of listeners to a remarkable literary talent and an engaging, personal, affirming biography.

One of my favorite short story collections. The situations and problems the characters encounter are far removed from those of today's world, but it's easy to see why these stories were so popular when they were first written. It's a step back in time to read this collection.

An interesting story of a woman's life and her struggle to raise her only son and teach him what is valuable in life. The Story is set in the late 1800 and early 1900's in rural and urban Chicago. The author called it "a book about cabbages..." but really, it's a story about Selina DeJong, orphaned as a young, wealthy child, who struggles to make a life for herself and her only child Dirk whom she has nicknamed "sobig". She marries a dolt for a husband and begins to work on a farm. Her husband is a small man with a small brain and is afraid of his own shadow which limits and frustrates Selina and keeps her from accomplishing anything for many years. Fortunately, her husband suffers an accidental death and she is fianlly able to make some necessary improvements which allow her son (who otherwise would have been a cabbage farmer his whole life) to attend college in the city. He succeeds in college, but when he gets out he sacrifices his dream profession(architecture) to make a lot of money doing something boring in finance, and in doing so, he misses the point his mother tried to teach him about success. (i.e. that money doesn't equal it.) This is a really good book with a wonderful and inspiring ending. If the whole book had been as good as the last couple chapters, I would have given it five stars easily. Although "So Big" isn't a famous book, Edna Ferber made it big with most of her others... You may have heard of a couple of them... "Giant" from which the Rock Hudson, James Dean film was made, and "Showboat", which was made into a sprawling musical. (My head aches just to think about it).

Without a doubt, _So Big_ is the best of all Edna Ferber's novels, and it was awarded the 1924 Pulitzer prize. It contains a strong portrayal of early 20th century midwestern agricultural life, which Ferber borrowed from her observations as a young women in Appleton, Wisconsin.

_So Big_ is the story of Dirk DeJong, and his mother Selina. After a colorful and tragic girlhood, she arrived as a schoolteacher in a Dutch farming community south of Chicago. She didn't quite fit in with the narrow-minded farmers and their overworked wives, yet she married a handsome farmer with notoriously unproductive land.

After his early death, she spends the next decades finding a market and coaxing a crop to grow in soggy land. By the time Dirk grows up, the "DeJong asparagus" is a success, and it enables his banking career. Yet he loses a sense of empathy and beauty, which Selina retains, despite her difficult path in life.

Ferber is the author who wrote _Show Boat_ and _Giant_. She could grind out popular dramatic fiction with loads of stock characters in a sentimentalized historic setting. But her later work loses the art found in _So Big_, which is peopled with multi-dimensional characters and a story which touches the reader's heart.

I highly recommend this book.

I loved this book. I am currently reading through the Pulitzer Prize winning novels and this is one of my favorites to date! The story reminds one of who you want to be - one who is strong, principaled and loving. The main charachter is a woman who faces virtually every challange that life has to offer and who still remains an individual of hope and direction. I thought that the novel was inspiring. The prose and the themes were engaging and very readable. The book reminds us to push on an be the people that we know that we can be.

A great inspiring book - read it.

Stage Door is a nice little play with lots of great comic moments and interseting characters. The main plot of the play deals with Terry Randal, a hardworking young actress trying to make it on 1930's Broadway. This storyline is not too engrossing, and the wooden character of Terry tends to get on one's nerves awfully fast. The redeeming parts of Stage Door, however, are the side plots which feature witty Judith Canfield, zany Bernice, tragic Kaye Hamilton and numerous other supporting characters. Stage Door is certaintly worth a read.

I was in a performance of this and thought that it was really great, I really enjoyed it. The main (female)character is Terry, and the 2nd lead is Kaye Hamilton. She is the only gloomy part of the entire thing but is SO cool!!

My mother gave me this book because I like to read "trashy romance novels". This book sucked. I detested Magnolia's mother. I hated the racial slurs. The husband was a royal bastard. And the daughter treated Magnolia like a simpleton! But what can I say, she was close to it. Magnolia had no real personality and absolutely no backbone whatsoever. Although she was sweet and I admired how much the loved the river and the theater I could barely stand her at certain times in the novel. I had to force myself to finish the book. Although many of you may disagree with me and certainly the other people who gave reviews do. But I have a right to my opinion and decided that what I thought of this book should be up here to warn off others.

Although she is somewhat neglected today, for more than three decades Edna Ferber was considered one of America's premiere authors. While her work included short stories and theatre, she was most famous for her novels, most of which focused on strong women coping with errant men in panoramic settings. SHOW BOAT was one of her first great successes. Today the story is better known through its musical theatre incarnation and the two film versions the stage show generated, one in 1936 directed by James Whale and starring Irene Dunne and one in the 1951 directed by George Sidney and starring Katherine Grayson. But while the stage and screen versions have their charms, none really captures the epic nature of Ferber's novel, which is as much about America as it is about the story of post-Civil War show folk who ply their trade on "The Cotton Blossom"--a floating theatre that travels the nation's waterways, most particularly the mighty Mississippi.

The story concerns three generations of women: Parthenia Hawks, a ram-rod upright New Englander who heartily disapproves of her husband's decision to purchase a show boat and involve the family with actors, God forbid; her daughter Magnolia, whose fresh beauty eventually propells her fame as one of the most popular actresses on the river; and her granddaughter Kim, who becomes a Broadway star. But the backbone of the story concerns Magnolia's ill-fated love for ne'er-do-well gambler Gaylord Ravenal, a love that tests her strength to the last degree. Just as Magnolia has to change to meet her constantly shifting circumstances, so is the nation changing around her, gradually shifting from a rather innocent, rural society to a much more hardened and sophistocated urban world. And Magnolia's adventures will take her from the savage natural beauty of the mighty Mississippi to the gambling dens and brothels of 'Gilded Age' Chicago to the jumpiness of the 1920's 'Great White Way' of New York.

Ferber was more of a popular than a literary writer, and her style here is very much of the 1910s and 1920s--but her prose is strong and clean, her imagery is magnificent, and as she tells her episodic story of a life and a nation in transition she weaves a number of interesting threads into the tapestry: the poverty of the beaten South, racial oppression, social caste, hypocrisy, and changing tastes in fashion and art. And always, always there is the great river: indifferent to the humanity that clings to its banks and travels its back, by turns placid and savage, graceful and dangerous. Ultimately the river becomes a metaphor for both the rapid changes in America and for the often dangerous power of love, and unlike the stage and film versions there will be few happy endings for the characters as they are swept through life's torrent very much as the Cotton Blossom is swept along the currents. It is a memorable package, and while Ferber would go on to write a great many other novels (including the famous GIANT), SHOW BOAT is perhaps her single best work. Recommended.

The popularity of the Kern-Hammerstein musical, academia's refusal to include the work in the "canon" of regularly-taught American novels, the popular assumptions about the novel's datedness, sentimentality and racial stereotypes--these are some of the factors that have contributed to the comparative neglect of one of the most original, engaging narratives by an American novelist.

Read the narrative "with" or "against" the grain. Ferber's voice is so vital and strong, so multilayered in its social-psychological-historical-cultural-archetypal meanings that an alert reader can not fail to become an active participant in several of the narrative's levels at once.

The river and the theater are not only Ferber's favorite settings but her metaphors for exploring the life of consciousness and explaining the forces that shape personality. Even when Gaylord and Magnolia abandon the Cotton Blossom and take up residence in Chicago, the river lives in them, exposing by its constantly-felt presence what is alive and dead, what is enduring and transitory. Magnolia's daughter and her husband, the "new" American theater of New York, the "reformed" Chicago--all these are condemned less in the surface narrative than in the energy Ferber brings to the subjects that are closer to her heart, characters and places whose life traces its wellsprings to the river.

This is "melodrama" in the best sense of the word--Ferber's music carrying much of the drama normally assigned to prose. The African-American spirituals and folk songs that provide Magnolia's education in turn inform the reader of her values and understandings through the course of her life's journey. Moreover, the narrative's movement matches the river's: it creates unexpected channels, moving forward in time, then backward, a device that enables the narrative to provide a perspective on the past as something familiar, as a place we have already know and treasure, a "spot of time" we've been missing and to which we wish to return.

But the melodrama also works here because Ferber constantly blurs the line between theater and life, letting us in on the "backstage" action that goes into playing a role and preparing a face. Magnolia blossoms only when she is on the stage, and Gaylord is never closer to authenticity than when he becomes an actor long enough to woo and marry Magnolia. Because Ferber presents her characters as deliberately assuming melodramatic parts, we don't see them as stereotypes as much as fellow beings taking on the roles required of us all to deal with life--and the river.

The musical version has a happy ending, with no deaths, no permanent damage. The sentiments in Ferber's original, on the other hand, are at once higher and deeper--equal parts elegy, stoicism, endurance, resolve. Ferber's last sentence describing Magnolia is a replication of an earlier sentence describing her mother: "The river, the show boat, the straight silent figure were lost to view." By this time Ferber's words have become such an integral part of the reader's consciousness that there's little chance of any of these images ever being lost to view.

Unlike many adaptations, the movie Giant is far better than the book. I found nothing but flat characters and gross oversimplification of Texas history and culture. It was a quick read, but it certainly wasn't worth the time. I suspect that Ms. Ferber has written some excellent novels, but Giant is not one of them.

This is a book that describes life as a Texan (Texian respectively). For me it was a great book 1. I am a born Texan 2. it really did show the true history of Texas. I also know what the reality of Texas was during that time period and I know that it was basically the way that they described it in the book. I think that most people that enjoy history, romance, and even if you aren't a Texan (respectably of course), i am pretty sure that you will enjoy it. I know i enjoyed it. I hope you will enjoy it also.

I loved the movie Giant, but was bowled over by the book. Ferber is a first-rate storyteller-- each character is appropriately developed and the language and phrasing are amazing. The landscape imagery is fantastic, but Ferber's genius is in describing--both visually and in the narrative--the delicate social structure that is the underpinning of the entire plot.

Having had this book recommended to me because I am a fan of James Michener's work, I eagerly dove into this story of the earliest years of white settlement of Oklahoma. And I stayed immersed in it until the final page! Although Ferber's portrayal of blacks is dated and condescending, readers who can overlook this fault will find a plot and characters that grab their interest from the start. Curiously, although her Indian characters generally are flat and unpolished portrayals, those whites who speak up for the displaced Indians are quite eloquent in defense of those same Indians. The story of the Sooners, the Cherokee Strip, the impact of "Oil!" and the eventual statehood of Oklahoma is sure to provide an entertaining--and perhaps even informative and enlightening--selection for readers who don't mind the occasional purple prose paragraph. I'd recommend it!

Ferber tales the story of Clio Dulaine -- an illegitimate French girl who comes to New Orleans after residing in Paris for most of her life. The story is set in the mid 1800's. Clio and her entourage include: Kaka, a voodoo-like nurse maid and her colorful friend Cupide -- a dwarf. Clio's ultimately goal is to reveal to her upper class blood grandparents who she is and blackmail them.

Clio is successful at this but while scheming she falls in love with Clint Maroon -- a flamboyant cowboy from the rough country Texas. They clash with each other, but ultimately there is a bond. When the scheme with Clio's grandparents forces them to move on they decide to go to Saratoga, New York. Saratoga, at this period of time, was a vacation resort area where many rich people spent their time. Clio schemes for more money by chumming up with the plentiful, wealthy bachelors. However, her bond and feelings for Clint causes problems.

This story was interesting in the fact that it reveals what it must have been like to live in New Orleans at this period of time. In addition, Ferber paints a luxurious picture of the resort-like community of Saratoga. Clint is quite a character and the two of them complement one another (Clio reminded me of Scarlett O'Hara in many ways). While Clio was a hard one to like, the book does keep one interested. I felt Ferber's main point was that there may have been armed robberies and anarchy in the west at that period of time, but the east had its share of crime. Graft, economic warfare (even leading to violence), and greed nearly ruined the country. Overall, another interesting book that teaches something about the American social aspects of living in the middle/late 1800's.

This a tale of Clio Dulaine, a young woman who see's her mistress mother become an "ugly, broken hearted woman" by her father's wife. She goes to her old home town of New Orleans by seeking revenge for her mother's unhappiness and by ruining her dead father's wife's life by re-hashing the family scandal. While in New Orleans she meets a handsome Texan Cowboy, Clint Maroon. They have a stormy affair but she won't commit to him because she want's respectablity, comfort and money, something her mother did not have. Clint and Clio then go to Saratoga and meet Bart Van Steed, a millionaire, who owns railroads. She woo's Bart but all the time thinking of Clint. In the end Bart asks her to marry him but she sacrafices money and comfort to be with Clint.

From the very first chapter, I was hooked on the descriptions of Seattle (which I have never seen) and its surrounding countryside. And now I've got the itch to vacation there and see the "view" for myself. Ferber has a gift for writing prose that is gripping without tawdry thrills or made-for-movie themes. The present day is 1941 on the verge of Pearl Harbor-- Older Americans are still apathetic about the war in Europe and don't have the desire to become involved. Japan seems to weigh little on the consciousness of people even on the west coast. But despite the undertones of impending involvement, this actually is a novel that explores the personalities and mettle of the men and women of different generations. Of what it takes to be a pioneer and what effects wealth and circumstance have on future generations. The characters each had a distinctness about them, some likeable others irritating or just plain pitiable. Strenght of character sometimes skips a generation. I would recommend this book to Ferber and Cather and perhaps even Maugham fans. I plan on reading more of Ferber in the future.

Edna Ferber, a best selling author of her time, has written an ageless book depicting four generations of a Seattle frontier family. This is a novel that is rich with fascinating characters and vividly describes a slice of multi-generational American life in the northwest. The book begins when Seattle was first settled, and carries the reader through time to the Alaskan gold rush, ending at the time of World War II. She paints a well drawn picture of time and place, and follows the family as it grows wealthy yet ill at ease with itself. Ms. Ferber takes the reader on a journey to beautifully interesting times and places. Her characters are fully drawn and set against a vast landscape. The pages fly. If you enjoy reading Edna Ferber, you will enjoy Great Son.