The Harbor

This early twentieth century socialistic novel didn't win the Pulitzer Prize, that honor would go to Ernest Poole's next novel, "His Family," which relates the struggles of a middle-class family in New York City in the 1910s. It has been conjectured though that the prize committee was actually honoring "The Harbor," which they had to pass over two years before since the award for fiction did not exist yet. Like "His Family," Poole's "The Harbor" also relates the struggles of class in New York City; in this case it's the lower classes that inhabit the industrial Brooklyn waterfront. The story is narrated by its central character, Billy, a recent college graduate who returns to the harbor where his father owns a profitable warehousing business. Set in an age of increasing industrialization, Billy's idealized view of the harbor would soon be challenged when his old college classmate Joe Kramer forces him to see the social injustice just beyond his doorstep.