Cheerful, by Request

This collection of short stories captures the inner lives of American women striving to find purpose, dignity, and happiness amid the constraints of early 20th-century society. With wit and emotional depth, these character-driven tales explore factory floors, family kitchens, and boarding houses, painting vivid portraits of resilience and realism. Each story offers a lens into a different world, bound together by a shared struggle for self-expression in a time of rigid norms and silent compromises.

Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was a novelist, short-story writer, and playwright whose work served as the inspiration for numerous Broadway plays and Hollywood films, including Show Boat, Cimarron, Giant, Saratoga Trunk, and Ice Palace. She co-wrote the plays The Royal Family, Dinner at Eight, and Stage Door with George S. Kaufman and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1925 for her novel So Big.