King Midas: A Romance

Before Upton Sinclair became the author of The Jungle, he wrote a novel about a different kind of gold. Arthur, an orphan raised by a country clergyman, has loved Helen, the Reverend's daughter, since childhood. When Helen departs for three years of European travel, Arthur does not languish, he studies, wins scholarships, transforms himself into a poet worthy of her. But sophistication changes a person, and the woman who returns is not the girl who once ran through May forests with him. Now she finds him charming, a talented boy to be patronized, but not the man she could love. Sinclair's early masterpiece is a brutal anatomy of one-sided devotion: the way we refashion ourselves for someone who was never watching, the way love can become a form of worship that damns the worshiper. The pastoral opening, all blooming flowers and playful streams, gives way to something colder and more honest about what it costs to want what you cannot have. For readers who cherish the romantics who came before F. Scott Fitzgerald, this is a forgotten gem about the terrible arithmetic of unrequited love.