Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser

"When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse."

Young Carrie Meeber leaves her rural home for the bright lights of Chicago. Through a series of relationships, she rises to stardom as an actress, while her lover, the sophisticated George Hurstwood, descends into tragic poverty and ruin.

Theodore Dreiser's groundbreaking novel stripped away the moralizing of Victorian fiction. It presents a gritty, realistic view of urban life, ambition, and the blind, indifferent forces that shape human destiny.