A Hoosier Holiday by Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Dreiser's A Hoosier Holiday turns a return to Indiana into a searching, vividly observed American journey. Traveling by automobile from the East with Franklin, a genial artist, and the capable chauffeur Speed, the narrator sets out to revisit the towns and landscapes of his childhood while shaping the trip into a book. Along the way, he rejects familiar routes for a more adventurous path, studies a map called "The Scenic Route," and is stirred by the lyrical promise of places like Tobyhanna, Meshoppen, Blossburg, and Roaring Branch. What begins as travel soon becomes a meditation on memory, class, regional identity, and the changing face of the country. As the road unfolds through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the industrial Midwest, Dreiser lingers over mills, rivers, roadside towns, and the people who inhabit them. Paterson's factories and waterfalls lead to reflections on labor, social unrest, and the force driving human striving, while conversations about Billy Sunday probe the uneasy mix of revivalism and modern life. In Toledo, a chance meeting with a young city editor becomes an intense friendship, only to reveal the fragility of ideal bonds. Returning toward Indiana, the narrator finds both disappointment and wonder in small towns, old acquaintances, and the landscapes that shaped his boyhood. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.