Boston Adventure (1943) By Jean Stafford

 

Jean Stafford was an accomplished short story writer when she hit it big at age 29 with her first novel: Boston Adventure. It was a best seller.

The book tells the story of a young woman named Sonie. Her father, Hermann Marburg was an educated German immigrant who like many tens of thousands of Germans came to America in search of opportunity in the years after the first World War. He met Shura, Sonie’s mother on the ship on the way over. She was a Russian immigrant, fleeing the chaos of post-revolution Russia. She was poor and minimally educated and spoke not a word of English, and only a small amount of German.

Sonie’s father tried to practice his trade as a skilled cobbler but rapidly discovered no one who lived in their immigrant community of Chichester near Boston could afford his services. Her mother took a job as a housekeeper at the Hotel Barstow, a summer retreat for Boston’s rich. In large part the financial disaster of their situation led to the rapid failure of the marriage. The father disillusioned by America's often mistreatment of immigrants became an alcoholic and abandoned the family. The mother slowly sunk into mental illness.

Since the mother was often too ill to go to work, Sonie, still a child, would cover her shift at the Hotel. There she met Miss Pride, a wealthy widow who went by her given name. She pitied Sonie and took into her home and under her puritan stern yet benevolent wings after Sonie’s mother was institutionalized. Also still living in Miss Pride's home was Miss Hopestill Mather, her strong-minded, almost bohemian daughter who she is trying to marry off to a young, well-educated doctor from “a good family,” named Philip McAllister. Dr. McAllister’s father is an Episcopal Reverend, and while Miss Pride dismissed him as “almost Catholic” conceded that he was, at least, protestant.

Hopestill gently teases McAllister, primarily to keep her mother happy. However, she wants nothing to do with him beyond friendship, that is until she becomes pregnant, father unknown. The doctor agrees to marry her to salvage everyone’s reputation even though he had been feigning interest in Sonie. All of which comes to a predictable ending (with one exception, I and I suspect a great many other readers expected Sonie’s alcoholic father to return to the story, he does not).

The author’s depiction of Boston’s elite is both comic and brutal. Having “lost” their city to Irish Catholic immigrants, they were determined to not allow a new wave of immigrants into their social circles.

Recommendation: Okay, I guess. The first part covering the new immigrants in Chichester is interesting. The second part, after Sonie moves to Beacon Hill in Boston, is at times fun, at other times clearly contrived situations. I found myself not caring about any of the main characters, including Sonie.