Spanning fifty years from the 1870s to the mid 1920s, the novel begins as a panorama of life on a Mississippi River show boat: a rival, or supplement, to some parts of Twains Life on the Mississippi. Ferber gives considerable devotion to character development throughout the novel; the reader gets to know the principal characters intimately. It contains strong undertones of racial bigotry in the post-emancipation period; now a shift to Chicago and the underground world of the professional gambler; and back to the theater and the show boat. This is a kaleidoscope through three generations of show business.

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