SOURCE: A review of Saratoga Trunk, in The New York Times Book Review, November 2, 1941, p. 4.

In the following excerpt, Wallace favorably assesses the characters and the pictorial style of Saratoga Trunk.

The most cautious reviewer can predict skyrocket success for Saratoga Trunk—and not feel that he is getting out on a limb, either. Few of Edna Ferber's vastly popular novels of the past decade have arrived on the book counters with more fanfare. In abridged form it has been serialized by a national magazine, and it will be seen on stage and screen as soon as the ponderous machinery for producing an A spectacle can begin grinding it out. Saratoga Trunk is what is known in a field of human endeavor only slightly less hazardous than the publishing business as a natural.

One can see without difficulty why this should be so. The pictorial qualities of Edna...