Pit

The bestselling novel of financial speculation in the Progressive Era from the author of McTeague.

Curtis Jadwin had to compete with other suitors to secure his wife’s hand in marriage, but after a year of marital bliss, he finds himself captivated by another: the high-stakes competition at the Chicago Board of Trade. At first merely dabbling in wheat speculation, Jadwin soon becomes obsessed with making deals and the roaring excitement of the trading pit.

In pursuit of ever greater wealth and power, Jadwin devotes his days and nights to the pit, recklessly gambling with the livelihoods of farmers he will never meet. Meanwhile, his wife is increasingly neglected and resorts to the companionship of a former suitor. But while his marriage is on the precipice of ruin, Jadwin is on the verge of his greatest win: cornering the wheat market. And while his play destroys the fortunes of many men, including his best friend, it is only when his own fortune crumbles that Jadwin will finally take stock of his life.

The second standalone novel in Norris’s planned Epic of the Wheat Trilogy, The Pit was published posthumously in 1902. A runaway bestseller and critical success, it was adapted into a Broadway play as well as the film A Corner in Wheat, directed by D. W. Griffith.

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