DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Windy McPherson's Son" by Sherwood Anderson. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

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.

Windy McPherson's Son is a 1916 novel by American author Sherwood Anderson. Windy McPherson's Son is Sherwood Anderson's first novel. Windy McPherson's Son is the story of Sam McPherson's rise in the world of business and search for emotional enlightenment in later life. McPherson starts out as an ambitious newsboy in Caxton, Ohio, with drunkard of a father who constantly embarrasses him. Eventually, after his mother's death and an episode with a middle-aged schoolteacher, McPherson leaves Caxton for Chicago. In Chicago, he gets a job as a buyer of farm implements and establishes his reputation in business. While his professional life is blossoming, his personal life suffers. After meeting Sue Rainey, the daughter of his boss Colonel Rainey, they get married and twice fail to have children. Following a business deal that forces his father-in-law out of his own company, McPherson and Sue Rainey separate.

It's hard to imagine any great author producing stories that do not contain autobiographical material, and surely Sherwood Anderson is no exception, if anything he proves the rule. So much of the content in Windy McPherson's Son is drawn from personal experience. Biographers have made great strides in digging up Sherwood Anderson's past and showing how his life and personal struggles unfold through the characters in his works. His writing is not only highly original and creative but therapeutic and cathartic. Sherwood had this obsession to create and explore his own psyche as he described the world about him. He would lock himself away in a small, sparsely furnished room and write away, working to get at the truth as he struggled to understand it. Once he had a vision of it, he refused to be a propagandist and espouse political or economic opinions, though as a writer he could not ignore the effects of politics, business, and industry on American life, in particular on small town middle America and middle class life. Upton Sinclair, after reading Windy McPherson's Son, wrote Sherwood a letter aiming "to make a socialist out of him." Anderson replied that he did not wish to see writers as propagandists, taking a socialist or conservative position, or any political position for that matter. Their role was to stay in life not in politics. They could not take sides, else they would only be dealing in half truths. He explains in his letter to Sinclair: "I want them to be something of a brother to the poor brute who runs the sweatshop as well as to the equally unfortunate brutes who work for him." For Anderson getting at the truth demanded avoiding stereotypes and setting forth doctrine. He wished to depict real people facing the real difficulties of their times and leave it to the reader to judge. This meant living among the people and breathing in life as they did while examining and understanding his own mood before attempting to imagine theirs. Understanding Anderson requires understanding his less apparent feelings towards the events and characters in his novels, and this can be aided by, I believe, familiarity with key events in his own life that most likely contributed to forming his various perspectives. Which brings me to the point of why I have decided to edit and add biographical footnotes to the present edition of Windy McPherson's Son. First, by editing this edition, I am intending to provide a more readable text. The edition that I'm working from contains many formatting errors, silly typos, or slips of the pen, and misspellings, which I have tried to remedy. The numerous punctuation infelicities, which I felt hesitant to address, remain. I feel that they do not get in the way of the reading. Secondly, I believe that adding biographical footnotes may help us understand and appreciate the impact that Sherwood Anderson's life might have had on his writing, while opening a small door that could shed a splinter of light on what his personal feelings might have been towards the events he depicts and the characters he fashions. The aforementioned being said, certainly, Sherwood Anderson would want us to give much more attention to his work than to his life if we wish to take from his writing any real thing of lasting literary value. However, information about his life could very well offer us a richer understanding of his personal feelings towards his subjects, the changing times he lived through, and significant personal events that inspired his writing. And for those who do not wish to read full biographies about the author, the biographical footnotes are a pleasant and helpful way of getting to know a little more about this remarkable man's life.

Sam stepped to the baggage-room door, handed him the cigar, and began giving directions, pointing into the baggage-room, intent and business-like in the face of the Irishman's laughter. Then, turning, he walked across the station platform to the main street of the town, his eyes bent on the ends of his fingers on which he was making computations with his thumb. Jerry looked after him, grinning so that his red gums made a splash of colour on his bearded face. A gleam of paternal pride lit his eyes and he shook his head and muttered admiringly. Then, lighting the cigar, he went down the platform to where a wrapped bundle of newspapers lay against the building, under the window of the telegraph office, and taking it in his arm disappeared, still grinning, into the baggage-room.

Reproduction of the original.