Throughout a single day in 1892 John Shawnessy recalls the great moments of his lifefrom the love affairs of his youth in Indiana to the battles of the Civil War to the politics of the Gilded Age to his homecoming as schoolteacher husband and father. Shawnessy is the epitome of the place and period in which he lives a rural land of springlike women shady gamblers wandering vagabonds and soapbox orators. Yet here on the banks of the Shawmucky River which weaves its primitive course through Raintree County Indiana he also feels and obeys ancient rhythms. A number-one bestseller when it was first published in 1948 this powerful novel is a compelling vision of 19th-century America with timeless resonance.
