Sinclair Lewis published his book Ann Vickers in 1933. The story follows Ann Vickers, the protagonist, from her school days as a tomboy in the American Midwest in the late nineteenth century, through college, and into her forties. It details her early 20th-century postgraduate suffragist period. She is incarcerated because she is a suffragist, and her experiences there inspire her interest in social work and jail reform. She had her first sexual encounter while working as a social worker in a settlement home during the First World War, gets pregnant, and then has an abortion. She marries a dull man years later after becoming successful in operating a cutting-edge jail for women, more out of loneliness than love.She falls in love with a controversial judge while stuck in a somewhat loveless marriage. She has a son by the judge, defying both middle-class tradition and that of her liberal social circle in New York.
