Main Street

Carol Milford grows up in a mid-sized town in Minnesota before moving to Chicago for college. After her education, during which she-s exposed to big-city life and culture, she moves to Minneapolis to work as a librarian. She soon meets Will Kennicott, a small-town doctor, and the two get married and move to Gopher Prairie, Kennicott-s home town.
Carol, inspired by big-city ideas, soon begins chafing at the seeming quaintness and even backwardness of the townsfolk, and their conservative, self-satisfied way of life. She struggles to try to reform the town in her image, while finding meaning in the seeming cultural desert she-s found herself in and in her increasingly cold marriage.
Gopher Prairie is a detailed, satirical take on small-town American life, modeled after Sauk Centre, the town in which Lewis himself grew up. The town is fully realized, with generations of inhabitants interacting in a complex web of village society. Its bitingly satirical portrayal made Main Street highly acclaimed by its contemporaries, though many thought the satirical take was perhaps a bit too dark and hopeless. The book-s celebration and condemnation of small town life make it a candidate for the title of the Great American Novel.
Main Street was awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, but the decision was overturned by the prize-s Board of Trustees and awarded instead to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. When Lewis went on to win the 1926 Pulitzer for Arrowsmith, he declined it-with the New York Times reporting that he did so because he was still angry at the Pulitzers for being denied the prize for Main Street.
Despite the book-s snub at the Pulitzers, Lewis went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, with Main Street being cited as one of the reasons for his win.