Black Is White

A wireless message from mid-Atlantic tells the New York household of James Brood, a rich old adventurer, that he is coming home — married, the week before in Paris, to a young foreign wife. His son Frederic, with whom he has long been on cold terms, has to live under the same roof with her, and the story of Brood's first marriage comes back into the house with the second. McCutcheon wrote it as a dark domestic drama, a long way from the Ruritanian comedies he was known for. Fifty-nine plates by painters including Winslow Homer and George Bellows carry the city and its harbors through the book, from Central Park to the lone tenement.