Free Air
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Free Air takes one by automobile in search of America, heading toward a West brimming with possibilities for suddenly mobile Americans at the end of a world war. Clair Boltwood and her father drive their Gomez-Dep roadster from Minnesota to Seattle, braving all the perils of early motoring. But the greatest distance to be overcome is the social one between the upper-crust Claire and a traveling mechanic named Milt.
First published in 1919, with fame just around the corner for Sinclair Lewis, Free Air foreshadowed a genre that includes John Steinbeckβs Travels with Charley and Josh Greenfield and Paul Mazurskyβs Harry and Tonto. The character of Claire, blazing her own trail across the West, looks back to the nineteenth-century pioneer woman and ahead to the independent-minded movie heroines played by Katherine Hepburn.
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Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885β1951), the son of a country doctor, was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. He attended Yale University, where he was editor of the literary magazine, and graduated in 1907. After a few of his stories had appeared in magazines and his first novel, Our Mr. Wrenn (1914), had been published, he was able to write full time. He was awarded the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith (1925) but refused to accept the honor. However, he accepted the Nobel Prize awarded him in 1930. He was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Barrett Whitener has been narrating audiobooks since 1992. His recordings have won several awards, including the prestigious Audie Award and numerous Earphones Awards. AudioFile magazine has named him one of the Best Voices of the Century.
