The Dwelling Place of Light

In mill-town Hampton, the Bumpus family lives at the breaking point between old New England respectability and the hard logic of industrial America. Edward Bumpus, once a clerk and now a gatekeeper at Chippering Mill, clings to genealogy as a substitute faith, nursing resentment, loss, and the sense that history has passed him by. His wife Hannah endures the family's fallen status with grim discipline, mourning the loss of a parlour, the erosion of religious certainty, and the impossibility of protecting her daughters from a changing world. Through Janet and Lise, the novel sharpens its portrait of generational conflict. Janet, serious and inward, moves through Fillmore Street and the commercial sprawl of Hampton with an acute eye for both ugliness and beauty, feeling trapped by the mills yet strangely awakened by the city's winter light. Lise, restless and glamorous, chases romance, celebrity, and escape through magazines, dance halls, and unsuitable men. Their cramped bedroom becomes a stage for longing, frustration, and fierce, protective love, while the office and mill worlds around them reveal the pressures of class, labor, and modern life. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.