Windy McPherson's Son

Sherwood Anderson was a 20th century American writer of short stories. Anderson grew up in Ohio and after college became a copywriter in Chicago. He is most famous for his collection of interrelated short stories, Winesburg Ohio, which he began writing in 1919. Windy McPherson's Son was Anderson's first novel written in 1914. The story is a social commentary like many of Anderson's books. A young boy grows up in rural Iowa. "At the beginning of the long twilight of a summer evening, Sam McPherson, a tall big-boned boy of thirteen, with brown hair, black eyes, and an amusing little habit of tilting his chin in the air as he walked, came upon the station platform of the little corn-shipping town of Caxton in Iowa. It was a board platform, and the boy walked cautiously, lifting his bare feet and putting them down with extreme deliberateness on the hot, dry, cracked planks. Under one arm he carried a bundle of newspapers. A long black cigar was in his hand."