Edna Ferber, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Show Boat and Giant,
achieved her first great success with a series of stories she published
in American Magazine between 1911 and 1913. The stories featured Emma
McChesney: smart, savvy, stylish, divorced mother, and Midwest traveling
sales representative for T. A. Buck's Featherloom skirts and petticoats.
With one hand on her sample case and the other fending off advances from
salesmen, hotel clerks, and other predators, Emma holds on tightly to
her reputation: honest, hardworking, and able to outsell the slickest
salesman. Like her compact bag of traveling necessities, Emma has her
life boiled down to essentials: her work and her seventeen-year-old son,
Jock. Her experience has taught her that it's best to stick to roast
beef, medium - avoiding both physical and moral indigestion - rather
than experiment with fancy sauces and exotic dishes. Yet she never shies
away from a challenge, and her sharp instincts and common sense serve
her well in dealing with the likes of Ed Meyer, a smooth-talking,
piano-playing salesman Blanche LeHay, prima donna of the Sam Levin
Crackerjack Belles and T. A. Buck Jr., the wet-behind-the-ears son o
trials of Emma McChesney. Published in 1917 and 1913, respectively,
these books represent early steps in Ferber's journey to her 1924
Pulitzer Prize. Fanny is the semiautobiographical story of a Jewish girl
growing up in the Midwest. Roast Beef is the chronicle of Emma
McChesney, a divorced mother and traveling sales rep for T.A. Buck's
Featherloom Skirts and Petticoats.
