The Kentons (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

“You have done nothing more true and complete,” wrote Henry James about William Dean Howells’s novel The Kentons. Here, Howells follows a Midwestern family as they travel first to New York and then to Holland—in order to take the daughter, Ellen, away from an abusive relationship. Along the way they explore the contrasts between their Ohio manners and those of the regions they visit, a familiar theme in Howells’s work.