Answer as a Man

New York Times Bestseller: In early 1900s Pennsylvania, the ambitious son of Irish immigrants pursues the American Dream in the face of injustice and intolerance.  Fourteen-year-old Jason Aloysius Garrity is now of age to work full-time in a Pennsylvania coal factory, earning four dollars a week. His family left their hardscrabble life in Ireland to create a better one in America. But their shanty-like home on a street filled with outhouses, horse manure, and the ever-present odor of noxious gas is a hell all its own. Yet Jason possesses the passion and principles that will lift him out of the abject poverty surrounding his widowed mother, fanatically religious younger brother, and manipulative crippled sister.   With World War I looming on the horizon, Jason begins to make his way in Belleville’s burgeoning business world. He marries beautiful, wealthy Patricia Mulligan, unaware that their union is built on a deception that will have far-reaching consequences not only in his life but in the lives of his three children.   Filled with unforgettable characters, this masterful retelling of the Book of Job depicts one man’s will to succeed amidst the slings and arrows of fortune.  

“First-class.” —The New York Times “The always-solid-selling Caldwell should really climb the charts with this one.” —Kirkus Reviews  Praise for Taylor Caldwell “Taylor Caldwell spins a yarn with force. . . . Her sense of timing and her ability to keep even the most alert reader guessing is something readers don’t find very often.” —Hartford Courant   “Taylor Caldwell never falters when it comes to storytelling.” —Publishers Weekly  

Taylor Caldwell was one of the most prolific and widely read authors of the twentieth century. Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in 1900 in Manchester, England, she moved with her family to Buffalo, New York, in 1907. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel when she was twelve. Married at age eighteen, Caldwell worked as a stenographer and court reporter to help support her family and took college courses at night, earning a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931. She adopted the pen name Taylor Caldwell because legendary editor Maxwell Perkins thought her debut novel, Dynasty of Death (1938), would be better received if readers assumed it were written by a man. In a career that spanned five decades, Caldwell published forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers. Her best-known works include the historical sagas The Sound of Thunder (1957), Testimony of Two Men (1968), Captains and the Kings (1972), and Ceremony of the Innocent (1976), and the spiritually themed novels The Listener (1960) and No One Hears But Him (1966). Dear and Glorious Physician (1958), a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God (1970), about the life of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time. Caldwell’s last novel, Answer as a Man (1981), hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.