In 1956 Grace Metalious published Peyton Place, the novel that unbuttoned the straitlaced New England of the popular imagination, transformed the publishing industry, topped the bestseller lists for more than a year, and made its young author one of the most talked-about people in America. In 1959 the sizzling sequel, Return to Peyton Place, picked up where Peyton Place left off: Allison MacKenzie, now the author of America’s #1 bestseller, is thrown into the glamorous whirl of the smart set of New York and Hollywood. At home, the rest of the most controversial characters in 1950s American fiction continue to create a stir in this ongoing exposé of sex, hypocrisy, social inequity, and class privilege in contemporary America. Peyton Place, the small, seemingly respectable New England town, is revealed as a vividly realistic cauldron of secrets and scandal. Peyton Place and its sequel, Return to Peyton Place, the books that readers used to hide under their mattresses, are now recognized by scholars as the Silent Generation’s Perfect Storm and predecessors to the women’s liberation movement. Treat yourself to this rediscovered classic.
Grace Metalious
