SOURCE: "A Connecticut Pageant by Miss Ferber," in The New York Times Book Review, October 18, 1931, p. 7.

In the following mixed review, Wallace applauds the vivid characters in American Beauty, but faults Ferber for emphasizing pageantry over plot.

In her newest novel, American Beauty, Edna Ferber has made yet another and more ambitious excursion into the annals of American history. The pageant of Colonial settlement she attempts to portray here in the life of a single family involves the founding and growth of a civilization and its decay and replacement by a new order.

The story is told in four deftly related panels. The first, set in 1930, depicts the return of the New England farm boy, True Baldwin, to the rocky fields he had deserted years before to make his fortune in the West. The second, a flashback to 1700, is centred upon the resplendent cavalier figure of Captain Orrange...