Susan Lenox

The sensational Susan Lenox, whose life takes two volumes to unfold (and who has thus far been given a wholly inadequate 1931 film vehicle that starred Greta Garbo) will finally have her story told properly. When we first meet Susan she is a fresh young thing living with small-thinking relations in a small Indiana town. Her relatives marry her off to a coarse local farmer; she takes refuge on a showboat with a theater company and never stops moving. She goes from Cincinnati to New York City to Paris. She goes back and forth among tenements, hotels, and theaters. She goes from being a street prostitute to a kept woman to an independent woman and from impassive disgust to lust and love. Published in 1917, Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise is a frank portrayal of early twentieth-century America.