The longtime fans of my reviews (like, um, my brother and no one else) will remember that I adore Edna Ferber’s Emma McChesney series. So I’m not even sure how good this book even is, all I know is that I loved it. The best part is how closely this novel mirrors my recent life. Emma McChesney travels to Bahia and Rio, Brazil—just like me! Then she goes to Buenos Aires, Argentina—just like me! Then she meets Miss Morrissey—just like me! Oh no wait, that didn’t happen to me. Anyway, after a triumphant voyage selling a line of petticoats, she returns home and finally deigns to marry T.A. Buck, the head of the petticoat company who’s been courting her for the last two books. Then she spends three months in marital idleness, shopping on Fifth Avenue and attending important dinners, but she can’t stand it and returns to work at the petticoat company. This was a very subversive message for 1915, but Edna Ferber slides it right down your throat before you’ve even noticed. The most fun part is when a dowdy rich girl comes to the factory to lecture the shop girls on dressing respectably, but instead a nice Jewish working girl gives the rich girl tips on clothes and advises her to marry the poor man she loves. Unfortunately, it looks like this is the last Emma McChesney book. ( )

Edna Ferber’s third and final book about savvy career woman Emma McChesney entertained me at least as much as the previous two, beginning with a flurry of excitement in the first chapter. After spending the last 15 years traveling between small Midwest towns or living in New York City, Emma sets off on a boat trip down the coast of the continent to sell her T. A. Buck Featherloom petticoats and skirts in Argentina, where she takes the country by storm. Based on the last two books I knew romance was headed Emma’s way, but she’d been so determinedly independent I wasn’t sure I would like it--I did.

Along with being good stories these books charmed and fascinated me by presenting a lively picture of how people lived, thought, worked, played, dressed, traveled, raised their children, and fell in love 100 years ago during the early decades of the 1900’s. In one chapter Emma was forced to deal with wealthy lady organizers bent promoting their pet cause, which wasn’t “Votes for women” as I had guessed, but instead a self-righteous insistence based on their rigid uneven morality that working class “girls” must be convinced to dress with drab unassuming modesty as befits their station. I would have been disappointed if Emma turned out to be an anti-suffragette, but Emma was right to poke a little good natured fun at these women.

Ferber wrote all three Emma McChesney novels long enough ago that they’re in the public domain so ebook versions can be downloaded from sites like Project Gutenberg. I listened to superbly narrated audio versions available on the Libravox website that made me almost enjoy my commute--I had witty Emma and her adventures to keep me occupied. ( )

Emma McChesney, single mom and former traveling saleswoman, has climbed the corporate ladder and is now a partner in a women's clothing firm. Rather than rest on her laurels, she expands her market to South America and designs a new skirt when the fashions change. A series of sketches shows Emma as she settles in to a new life.

This is the third book in the series and is less compelling than the other two. The best parts of the book are when Emma muses on the issues that absorb working women--work vs. marriage, clothes and relationships vs. the job. These were fun to read, though. ( )

Read on the Kindle. Spoilers there could be. This is a set of connected stories about Emma McChesney, who made a bad marriage and built herself a career as a single woman with a son. She is a heroine, without much shading or complexity. She raised her son right, she built a career with her skill and heart and brain. The first story tells of her trip to develop a market in Argentina for the underclothes that her firm sells, leaving her somewhat feckless boss to take care of things at home; he learns he can do the job well & likes it so when she comes back they have to readjust, and get married. Another story tells of them at work before they get married, and one tells of her taking 3 months off & hating it, and so on. It is fine. Old-fashioned over-writing, and as I said, without much contrast.