An elderly, modest New York couple, 'young-hearted old lovers, Mr. and Mrs. Seth Appleby', decide on a whim to risk their life savings on opening a roadside cafe in seaside New England. It doesn't work out, but that's just the start of their misfortune. The Innocents (subtitled 'A Story of Lovers') features an unlikely romantic pair of sexagenarian Johnny Appleseeds in a sweet story awash with obvious pathos, artfully offset by the gently ironic air of the author, Sinclair Lewis. (Goodreads)
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." He is best known for his novels Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935). His works are known for their critical views of American capitalism and materialism in the interwar period. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."