The Outward Room

The Outward Roomis a rediscovered classic of American literature, a book about a young womanrs"s journey from madness to self-discovery that is as immediate and moving today as when it first appeared in 1937. Having suffered a nervous breakdown after her younger brotherrs"s death in a car accident, Harriet Demuth has been committed to a mental hospital, where her doctorrs"s Freudian nostrums have done little to make her well. Convinced that she and she alone can refashion her life, Harriet makes a daring escape from the hospital-hopping a train by night and riding the rails into the vastness of New York City in the light of the rising sun. This is the 1930s, the midst of the Great Depression, and at first Harriet is lost among the cityrs"s anonymous multitudes. She pawns her jewelry and is living an increasingly hand-to-mouth existence when she meets John, a machine-shop worker. Slowly Harriet begins to recover her sense of self; slowly she and John begin to fall in love. The story of that emerging love, told with the lyricism of Virginia Woolf and the realism of Theodore Dreiser, is the heart of Millen Brandrs"s remarkable book.

Millen Brand (1906–1980) taught writing at New York University and worked as a book editor for Crown Publishers. His books include Local Lives, a book of poems about the Pennsylvania Dutch; Savage Sleep; Peace March: Nagasaki to Hiroshima; and The Outward Room. In 1948 he was nominated for an Oscar with Frank Partos for their adaptation of Mary Jane Ward’s novel The Snake Pit.

Peter Cameron is the author of several novels, including Andorra, The Weekend, and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You. He lives in New York City.