Fairfax and His Pride: A Novel

January 1880: a young artist steps off a train into the killing cold of New York, carrying nothing but talent, hope, and the memory of Southern warmth. Antony Fairfax has come from New Orleans to claim his future, but the city greets him with ice and indifference. His own relatives, the Carews, meet him with doors half-closed and words half-spoken, a reception more brutal than any winter wind. Left to navigate Manhattan's unforgiving streets alone, Antony's only refuge comes in the form of his young cousins, Bella and Gardiner, whose innocent affection offers brief shelter from a world that views him as either invisible or inconvenient. Van Vorst writes with sharp precision about the particular loneliness of the ambitious artist: the way rejection sharpens desire, how a stranger's smile can feel like salvation, and the quiet violence of familial coldness. This is a novel about what it costs to pursue art in a city that consumes dreamers, and whether belonging can ever be earned rather than given. For readers who cherish quiet literary portraits of outsiders finding their footing, this 1920 novel remains remarkably resonant.