Tom Walker

• First Published - 1947
• A bold, biting anti-war novel, The Tom-Walker exposes the effects of war on both the soldiers and their families.
• The Tom-Walker spans three generations in a Midwestern family beginning with the patriarch, Milt Stone, who lost a leg fighting in Grant's army. Milt is the Tom-Walker, circus slang for man on stilts. After the Civil War, he takes his family west to the Missouri country. There he gains a reputation as a raconteur and as a passionate defender of the little man who works hard, fights the wars, and gets squeezed out by powerful interests. He lives to see his son and grandson fight in World War I and World War II, respectively, and return home from those wars, maimed like him, only to have to resume a fight just to stay alive. How people like the Stones fare is the story within this story.