A Son at the Front

Edith Wharton's A Son at the Front is a piercing wartime novel of family, duty, and the private costs of public catastrophe. In Paris, as the city's beauty endures under the shadow of conflict, Campton is caught between his former wife, their son George, and the social world that tries to turn fear into performance. Their tense conversations expose old resentments, patriotic posturing, and the helplessness of parents watching history close in on a child. As news of wounded boys, charity spectacles, and shifting military orders spreads through the city, Campton is forced to confront his own terror for George and his shame at feeling it. Miss Anthony's quiet kindness, Mrs. Brant's strained composure, and George's calm acceptance of service reveal the novel's central struggle between love and duty, beauty and devastation, public gesture and private grief. When America enters the war, the hospital scene briefly joins national hope to personal suffering, but George's distance remains profound. His death soon after, and Campton's stunned, delayed grief, leave the novel as a haunting meditation on sacrifice, fatherhood, and the emotional wreckage war leaves behind. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.