Contents -- Prologue: The Lords of Life -- 1. Does Nobody Here Know Rip Van Winkle? -- 2. Nathaniel Hawthorne Dissects Betrayal -- 3. Louisa May Alcott Meets Mark Twain over the Young Face of Change -- 4. Henry James and Zora Neale Hurston Answer Defeat -- 5. Edith Wharton's Anatomy of Breakdown -- Midpoint: The Lords of Life Revisited -- 6. The Immigrant Novel: Fear in America -- 7. William Faulkner and Toni Morrison Plot Racial Difference -- 8. Saul Bellow Observes Old Age -- 9. Don DeLillo and Marilynne Robinson Mourn Loss -- 10. Walt Whitman Finds the Courage to Be -- Bibliography -- Index.