Their Silver Wedding Journey — Volume 2

William Dean Howells, the friend of Mark Twain and pioneering voice of American realism, turns his meticulous eye on the Marches, yes, those Marches, parents of the famous Jo, now older, wealthier, and embarked on their silver wedding anniversary tour of Europe. Volume Two finds our couple in the elegant spa town of Carlsbad, where the mineral waters promise restoration and the society promises complication. Mrs. March, sharp-tongued and acutely perceptive, dissects the parade of English, American, and Continental travelers with an observer's relish: the grasping journalists, the nouveau riche Americans desperately performing culture, the uneasy intersections of class and nationality. Her husband watches, mediates, and reflects on nearly three decades of marriage amid the transitory spectacle of foreign society. This is a novel of surfaces, of hotels and promenades, of introductions made and avoided, of the small negotiations that constitute civilized life. Howells finds drama in the dining room, comedy in the concert hall, and something like wisdom in the gap between how people present themselves and who they actually are.