A classic historical novel of a young doctor and the Erie Canal, which brought with it to Western New York not only progress and prosperity but unforeseen upheavals. “[An] elaborate, colorful, and affectionate portrait of a canal town in its growing pains. Obviously [Samuel Hopkins] Adams has not only gone back to the sources but has lived with them for a long time before writing his account of a young doctor setting up his practice.”—The Atlantic “Mr. Adams knows his Erie lore so well and has boned up so thoroughly on American medical history in the early part of the [eighteenth] century that nobody who reads the book can fail to learn a great deal about what life was like in general and the practice of medicine in particular was like in a boom town.”—The New Yorker “His villains are strongly delineated and actuated by very human motives, his minor figures are picturesque and drawn with gusto, even his sympathetic characters come alive with personal crochets and idiosyncrasies.”—Carl Carmer, Saturday Review of Literature

STANLEY RICHARD COLTON, M. D., heaved his powerful form to and fro in his bed and cursed the day he had come to Montant Point, which chanced to be the day just ended. All the world had been open to him, and his father's yacht to bear him to whatsoever corner thereof he might elect, in search of that which, once forfeited, no mere millions may buy back, the knack of peaceful sleep. But his wise old family physician had prescribed the tip-end of Long Island. "Go down there to that suburban wilderness, Dick," he had said, "and devote yourself to filling your lungs with the narcotic ocean air. Practise feeding, breathing and loafing, and forget that you've ever practised medicine."

"Twentieth century woman of the luxury class." Cf. Hanna, A. Mirror for the nation.

Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871--1958) was an American author, born in Dunkirk, New York. He served as a reporter for the New York Sun before joining McClure's Magazine, where he became a crusader for improved governmental oversight of public issues like patent medicines. He is credited with influencing the passage of the first Pure Food and Drugs Act. His books include Revelry (1926), The Great American Fraud (1906), The Harvey Girls (1942), Grandfather Stories (1955), and Tenderloin (1959).