Part I
The first section, set mainly in Paterson, New Jersey, is centered on Clarence Wilmot, a minister in his forties who abruptly loses his faith one very hot afternoon shortly before a dinner party. His loss of faith is presented as coinciding with the fainting spell of the 17 year old silent film actress Mary Pickford, who is at local landmark Lambert Castle making a film with D.W. Griffith. His decision to leave the ministry has serious social and financial consequences for his wife and three children, 16 year old Jared, 14 year old Esther and 10 year old Ted. Unable to find work suitable for a man of his education, Clarence is reduced to selling encyclopedias door to door, a job he performs poorly. Growing more and more depressed and withdrawn, he only finds solace in the nickelodeon cinemas of the time and dies prematurely.
Read more about this topic: In The Beauty Of The Lilies
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“In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens, a substantial part of its whole population, who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“A man’s real and deep feelings are surely those which he acts upon when challenged, not those which, mellow-eyed and soft-voiced, he spouts in easy times.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 13 (1962)