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  • A Son at the Front

  • Written by: Edith Wharton
  • Narrated by: Richard Poe
  • Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
  • 3.0 out of 5 stars (2 ratings)

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A Son at the Front cover art

A Son at the Front

Written by: Edith Wharton
Narrated by: Richard Poe
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Publisher's Summary

Wharton’s antiwar masterpiece probes the devastation of World War I on the home front.

Inspired by a young man Edith Wharton met during her war relief work in France, A Son at the Front opens in Paris on July 30, 1914, as Europe totters on the brink of war. Expatriate American painter John Campton - whose only son, George, having been born in Paris, must report for duty in the French army - struggles to keep his son away from the front while grappling with the moral implications of his actions. 

Interweaving her own experiences of the Great War with themes of parental and filial love, art, and self-sacrifice, national loyalties and class privilege, A Son at the Front is a poignant meditation on art and possession, fidelity and responsibility in which Wharton tells an intimate and captivating story of war behind the lines.

Public Domain (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

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Americans in Paris during WW1

Limited and labored. The home front,being Paris from the outbreak of hostilities to America’s entry into WW1, is backdrop to the trials of American expatriate artist John Campton with his desperately doting love for his son, who is French born and subject to the French draft which he embraces. Twice George insists on going to the front, successfully courting his death. John’s endless ruminations on George, his ex-wife, her husband and a monotonous cast of supernumeries required my determination to finish, to see what Wharton could write about besides the Gilded Age.

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