Publisher's Synopsis
The Turmoil is the first novel in Booth Tarkington's loosely connected Growth trilogy. It is the story of two families living in a city in the midst of an industrial boom, the costs of succeeding in this new world as well as the dangers of failing to adapt to changing times. Tarkington's novels lack the satiric bite of his contemporary Sinclair Lewis, but he is no less ambivalent about the compromises and shallow striving of the merchant classes in these new Midwestern cities.