Walter Bridge is an ambitious lawyer who redoubles his efforts and time at the office whenever he sense that his family needs something, even when what they need is more of him and less of his money. Affluence, material assets, and comforts create a cocoon of community respectability that cloaks the void within—not the skeleton in the closet but a black hole swallowing the whole household.
The Bridge novels have been recognized as classics during their author’s lifetime. With their shared ability to capture the manners and mores of the American upper middle class, Connell has done for the late thirties what Sinclair Lewis did for the twenties.