Carol Kennicott marries a small-town doctor and moves to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, hoping that her idealistic belief in social reform can be realized. Instead, she observes firsthand the stifling realities of small town life--cultural narrowness, smugness, petty cruelties--and finds that her marriage can't survive what she learns. Sinclair Lewis's best-selling 1920 novel was controversial in its time because of its gritty refusal to romanticize small-town life--one of America's fondest myths.