Magnolia Hawks spends her childhood aboard the Cotton Blossom, growing up amid simmering racial tension and struggling to survive life on the Mississippi. When she falls in love with the dashing Gaylord Ravenal and moves with him to Chicago, the joy of giving birth to their beautiful daughter, Kim, is offset by Gaylord's gambling addiction and distrustful ways. Only when Kim sets off on her own to pursue success on the New York stage does Magnolia return to the Cotton Blossom, reflecting on her own life and all who once ...
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Magnolia Hawks spends her childhood aboard the Cotton Blossom, growing up amid simmering racial tension and struggling to survive life on the Mississippi. When she falls in love with the dashing Gaylord Ravenal and moves with him to Chicago, the joy of giving birth to their beautiful daughter, Kim, is offset by Gaylord's gambling addiction and distrustful ways. Only when Kim sets off on her own to pursue success on the New York stage does Magnolia return to the Cotton Blossom, reflecting on her own life and all who once called the show boat their home.
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Add this copy of Show Boat to cart. $18.03, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2022 by Classy Publishing.
Parthy Ann Hawkes should be one of the most beloved characters in all of American literature -- alongside Jay Gatsby, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Atticus Finch. She is at once a sartorial Presbyterian wife and mother and a school marm caricature, but that is okay, because she was a school marm and Ferber does not fail to make her eternally endearing as she constantly nags her husband and her daughter. I will return to this book again and again. Ferber successfully creates a setting and mood that feels genuine and plucked right out of history, although it may be slightly romanticized, as a theater troupe sails up and down the Mississippi bringing the best of bad American theater to the American people of the soil.
It reminded me on occasion of Theodore Dreiser's "Sister Carrie," but only because the second half of the book is set in Chicago and it involves a couple's financial struggles: one a gambler, the other an actor. The similarities, pretty much, end there.
It's too bad that the musical version has become more popular, even though it has given American some wonderful music. Two things I wish had been included in the book: 1) more about Jo and Queenie (they disappear halfway through the story), 2) I wish Ferber had actually spent time on Parthy's arrival in Chicago to witness her daughter's situation (she skipped over it and returned to it briefly in one or two paragraphs). Other than that, I throughly enjoyed this book and will certainly return to it again in future.
