Harry Sinclair Lewis was a novelist short story writer and playwright He was awarded and rejected a Pulitzer prize for Arrowsmith and in 1930 became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature His books Elmer Gantry Main Street Babbitt Kingsblood Royal and Cass Timberlane were all banned in various places and times in the United States Main Street s protagonist Carol Milford from Minneapolis must adjust to small town life after marrying country doctor Will Kennecott and moving to his home town of Gopher Prairie She finds the town backward ugly and conservative and sets out to change it She says I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be I do not admit that dish washing is enough to satisfy all women Her efforts meet with resistance but a retreat to Washington D C reveals that big city life presents its own problems and she must learn to accept and appreciate Gopher Prairie for what it is The first of Sinclair Lewis s great successes Main Street shattered the sentimental American myth of happy small town life with its satire of narrow minded provincialism Reflecting his own unhappy childhood in Sauk Centre Minnesota Lewis s sixth novel attacked the conformity and dullness he saw in midwestern village life Young college graduate Carol Milford moves from the city to tiny Gopher Prairie after marrying the local doctor and tries to bring culture to the small town But her efforts to reform the prairie village are met by a wall of gossip greed conventionality pitifully unambitious cultural endeavors and worst of all the pettiness and bigotry of small town minds Lewis s portrayal of a marriage torn by disillusionment and a woman forced into compromises is at once devastating social satire and persuasive realism His subtle characterizations and intimate details of small town America make Main Street a complex and compelling work and established Lewis as an important figure in twentieth century Ameri - from Amzon