The Rise of Roscoe Paine

A man who has buried his own name after his father's disgrace keeps house for his mother on a Cape Cod bluff, and does nothing whatever — until a right-of-way, a millionaire's daughter and a piece of town politics oblige him to be somebody again. Lincoln built a whole career out of one place; the town meeting in this one is as good as anything in American regional fiction, and Roscoe's uselessness is diagnosed rather than excused.