The Trouble I’ve Seen

Description

These four interlinked stories encapsulate Martha Gellhorn’s firsthand observation of the Great Depression. Fiction crafted with documentary accuracy, they vividly render the gradual spiritual collapse of the simple, homely sufficiency of American life in the face of sudden unemployment, desperate poverty and hopelessness. Martha was the youngest of a squad of sixteen, handpicked reporters who filed confidential reports directly to Roosevelt’s White House. They catch the mood of a generation ‘sucked into indifference’ and of young men who no longer ‘believe in man or God, let alone private industry’.

‘Lives and dances in the memory.’ – Herald Tribune

‘She achieves strength of effect without the least sacrifice of veracity, and though her work is saturated with pity never once did I find her lapsing into sentimentality.’ – H.G. Wells