Years of Grace

''Years of Grace'' (1930) by Margaret Ayer Barnes, now in the public domain, won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1931. Barnes' alma mater Bryn Mawr College, along with the characters of college presidents M. Carey Thomas and Marion Park, figure prominently in this work. The story, beginning in the 1890s and continuing into the 1930s, chronicles the life of Jane Ward Carver from her teens to age 54. Centering on the social manners of upper middle class society, the female protagonists are often traditionalists, struggling to uphold conventional morality in the face of changing social climates.