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Audiobook edition · 11 h 8 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
How much of herself must a woman give to marriage—and what can she ask for in return?
In The Book of Susan: A Novel, Lee Wilson Dodd explores a woman's life within marriage, where family demands and social expectations press against personal wishes. The questions are close to home: what a wife owes, what she may ask for, and how she keeps a self within a close bond.
Published in 1920, the novel belongs to the years just after the First World War, when the roles of women and the meaning of marriage are subjects of debate. Its world asks you to weigh familiar tensions: duty against desire, the claims of a household against the wishes of the person within it.
What you’ll discover
- Marriage and the self Consider what happens to a woman's wishes when her life is bound to another's.
- The weight of expectations Explore the pressure that family, society, and custom place on a woman's choices.
- A world questioning duty Enter an early twentieth-century world where old ideas about marriage face growing questions.
- Questions that remain close Reflect on what a wife owes and what she has room to ask.
- A revealing distance –
Who will love it
If you love a witty narrator, a heroine who thinks for herself, and friends who argue about love, class and freedom over dinner, this novel gives you all of it.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A stranger interrupts Hunt's comfortable life
- Susan bears the neighborhood's judgment
- Imagination shelters Susan before danger strikes
- Kindness must leave room for fairness
- Susan makes compassion a practical choice
- Love forces hidden claims into view
- Independence carries its own loneliness
- Susan answers the man describing her
- Susan insists on her own road
Who’s who
- Susan BlakeA mechanic's daughter from Birch Street, quick, honest and imaginative, who wants to write and to belong to herself.
- Ambrose HuntThe wealthy, witty narrator who becomes Susan's guardian and finds that she changes how he thinks and lives.
- Phil FarmerA grave Yale philosopher who teaches Susan logic, loves her, and trusts ideas more than feelings.
- Maltby PharA magazine editor and self-styled anarchist who lives for pleasure and hopes to win Susan for his own circle.
- Miss GoucherHunt's stern housekeeper, who softens into Susan's devoted friend and promises to make a home with her.
- Jimmy KaneSusan's boyhood hero from Birch Street, who grows into a cheerful, hard-working young man seeking an education.
- Gertrude HuntHunt's proud, beautiful wife, who left him because he would not honor her class and its ideals.
- Lucette ArthurGertrude's friend, a graceful snoop who spreads rumors about Susan and Hunt.
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The Book of Susan: A Novel
by Lee Wilson Dodd · 1920
A mechanic's daughter with terrier eyes and a dinner pail walks into a garage and upends a rich man's life.
Medium level5–10 hours to read2 languages
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In short
Would you open your door to a girl lying beside a dinner pail on a garage ramp at eleven at night, her cheek bruised, whispering that someone has a razor? Ambrose Hunt does.
The Book of Susan: A Novel at a glance
- Reading time
- About 6 h 30 min5 h 10 min fast, 7 h 45 min slow
- Length
- 92,600 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1920by Lee Wilson Dodd
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A girl with a dinner pail appears
The book begins in 1907 with Ambrose Hunt, a wealthy and idle essayist in New Haven. He says he is only the chronicler, and that the real subject is a girl named Susan Blake. Her father, Robert Blake, is a skilled mechanic who becomes a menace on weekends.
Hunt meets the daughter at the Eureka Garage, where his touring car is under repair. Bob Blake lies beneath it, swearing at a lost nut. A small figure in plaid calico appears beside Hunt, with black eyes, a thin pigtail tied with a shoelace, and a dinner pail. She asks him to tell her father that dinner is here. Hunt suggests she wait. She answers that this is exactly why she is leaving, and she walks out through the great door.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1920
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 7 h 15 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Dodd, Lee Wilson. The Book of Susan: A Novel. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-book-of-susan-a-novel.
Dodd, L. W. (2026). The book of Susan: A novel. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-book-of-susan-a-novel (Original work published 1920)
Dodd, Lee Wilson. The Book of Susan: A Novel. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-book-of-susan-a-novel.
@book{dodd2026book,
author = {Dodd, Lee Wilson},
title = {The Book of Susan: A Novel},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-book-of-susan-a-novel},
note = {First published 1920}
}
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What is The Book of Susan about?
It follows Susan Blake, a mechanic's daughter from a poor street in New Haven, who is taken in by a rich essayist, educated by friends, and grows into a writer. It explores love, freedom, class and the First World War.
Who is Ambrose Hunt?
Hunt is the narrator, a wealthy, witty essayist who becomes Susan's guardian. He tells her story with humor and regret, and his own feelings for her shape everything he reports.
Who is Artemis in the book?
Artemis is the Greek goddess of the hunt, who lives alone among clear water and wild hills. Susan adopts her as a private goddess, and she stands for freedom and distance from stuffiness.
The author
Lee Wilson Dodd
1879–1933 · American poet and playwright
Lee Wilson Dodd (1879–1933) was an American poet and novelist. He lived in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He wrote poetry and fiction, including The Book of Susan, a novel published in 1920. He died in 1933, aged 53.
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