His Family

His Family is a novel by Ernest Poole, first published in 1917. Awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1918, it views social change through a widower and three daughters.

Roger Gale lives in an old New York house increasingly overshadowed by the modern city. Remembering his late wife's wish that he remain close to their children, he tries to understand Edith, Deborah, and Laura as each defines family differently.

Edith centres her life on husband and children; Deborah devotes herself to an experimental school serving immigrant families; Laura pursues independence and pleasure. Their competing needs draw Roger into conflicts between home and city.

Illness, marriage, financial strain, labour, and the approach of war alter the household across several years. Poole links generations without forcing them into one model, making Roger's legacy continuity through uncontrollable lives.

"He was thinking of the town he had known. Not of old New York—he had heard of that from old, old men when he himself had still been young and had smiled at their garrulity. He was thinking of a young New York, the mighty throbbing city to which he had come long ago as a lad from the New Hampshire mountains."