Women and Thomas Harrow

A Novel

John P. Marquand

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781504015745
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

" Women and Thomas Harrow is Grade A Marquand, spellbindingly readable, smooth as cream in its polished technical craftsmanship, sardonically witty and filled with a special sort of wry and melancholy worldly wisdom."  — The New York Times
Playwright Thomas Harrow followed his first Broadway smash with Hollywood celebrity and became the toast of theaters from coast to coast. But the road to riches and fame has been anything but smooth. Now in his fifties, Thomas's three unhappy marriages have caused significant emotional and financial damage, and the disastrous failure of his musical  Porthos of Paris will now force him to sell the beloved Federalist house he bought in his hometown of Clyde, Massachusetts.
Tom's search for the causes of his current distress takes him back to his youth and through each decisive moment of his life: the literary successes, the hack work, the love affairs that turned sour. He married three charming, vivacious women—Rhoda, Laura, and Emily—yet never figured out how to share his thoughts and feelings with them. Partly the work was to blame, as the demands of his artistic life often ran counter to domestic arrangements. But with the wisdom of experience, Tom can also see that his character judgments were often mistaken, and that, despite his wit, charm, and intelligence, there is a fundamental part of himself that remains shrouded in mystery. Is there still time to unlock his heart, or has the window for love closed to him?
 
An honest and moving portrait of a successful man's never-ending quest for happiness,  Women and Thomas Harrow is one of John P. Marquand's most autobiographical novels.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• I The Name Was Spelled P-h-r-y-c-e When They Wove the Bayeux Tapestry
• II It’s Always Fair Weather, Even without a Stein, When Good Fellows Get Together
• III It’s Always Old Home Week in Any Old Home Town
• IV He Meant It When He Said, “God Bless and Keep You, Thomas”
• V And Some Day the Nation May Honor You, Too—Just like Your Dear Old Pop
• VI There’s an Awful Lot of Knowledge One Never Learns in College—or in a Judge’s Library
• VII After All, He Couldn’t Take It with Him
• VIII Don’t Change a Barrel on Niagara Fall
• IX I’m Glad You Asked That Question
• X If Change Would Not Keep Changing
• XI There’s Something I Ought to Tell You, Emily
• XII Bread upon the Girls
• XIII The Play Might Get to Broadway—and Never Mind the Girls
• XIV Good Night, Monte Cristo
• XV It Lingers Still, Thy Infinite Variety
• XVI Life and Love Moved Faster Then
• XVII There Was Enough to Take Her Shopping
• XVIII He Heard about Hal in Wilmington
• XIX Don’t Look at All of It Just Yet
• XX To Put It Very Frankly, He Was Feeling Fine
• XXI King Midas Would Have Understood Palm Beach
• XXII Happiness Was Just around the Corner
• XXIII It Was Foreshadowed on Lexington Avenue
• XXIV Too Dark Downstairs for Sleeping
• XXV The Army Had a Name for Them
• XXVI You Always Fell Down Somewhere When Running Through a Script
• XXVII Emily Wasn’t Feeling Very Well That Morning
• XXVIII Mr. Harrow Would Much Rather Not Wait for Half an Hour
• XXIX Once One, Always a Bread Thrower
• XXX The Right Thing Done and Over, and Night Was Drawing Nigh
• About the Author
• Copyright Page