The Little Lady of the Big House

A triangle romance provides the basis for a questioning of the meaning of masculinity, as well as an examination of agribusiness in California.Jack London said of this novel: "It is all sex from start to finish -- in which no sexual adventure is actually achieved or comes within a million miles of being achieved, and in which, nevertheless, is all the guts of sex, coupled with strength."The story concerns a love triangle. The protagonist, Dick Forrest, is a rancher with a poetic streak (his "acorn song" recalls London's play, "The Acorn Planters"). His wife, Paula, is a vivacious, athletic, and sexually self-aware woman, who falls in love with Evan Graham, an old friend of her husband's. Unable to choose between the two men, she wounds herself mortally with a rifle in what her husband is certain is a suicide.