Buttered Side Down

It is a collection of ten realistic short stories written by Edna Ferber, set in early 20th-century American cities and small towns. Each standalone tale depicts ordinary working-class men and women struggling with loneliness, unmet dreams, class gaps, broken romance and harsh daily reality. Stories cover a young shop girl trapped by small-town life, a traveling actress lonely on tour, a hotel stenographer weighed down by her appearance, a homesick pair of strangers crossing paths in the city, a country boy destroyed by brutal naval life, and young clerks and laborers crushed by unfulfilled ambitions. All narratives abandon fairy-tale happy endings, truthfully showing that most people merely endure life’s hardships without perfect happy resolutions.