TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of September 17, 1944

FictionNonfiction
WeekMonth
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1
THE HISTORY OF ROME HANKS
Joseph S. Pennell
Cover of THE HISTORY OF ROME HANKS

THE HISTORY OF ROME HANKS

by Joseph S. Pennell · Scribner

3 wks at #1 · 6 on list

Lee Harrington, the central figure of the novel, is a young man trying to sort out his memories of the tales of the Civil War told him by his grandfather and his father, and to imagine what their lives must have been like, and what the War had done to them. The tale ranges from past to present, from Gettysburg and Savage's Station and Shiloh to present-day Kansas. Pennell employs a fragmented, interior-monologue narrative style, giving his reader a view of the War as his characters must have experienced it, and he does it with amazing control.

4
A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN
Betty Smith
Cover of A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN

by Betty Smith · Harper

51 wks on list

Francie Nolan and her brother, Neeley, grow up in the slums of Brooklyn in the early 1900s.

Historical bestseller data sourced from the New York Times Book Review, archived by Hawes Publications.