Cass Timberlane is a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis

Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...

, published in 1945. It is Sinclair Lewis' nineteenth novel and one of his last.

It was made into a romantic

Romance film

Romance films are love stories that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 starring Spencer Tracy

Spencer Tracy

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was an American theatrical and film actor, who appeared in 75 films from 1930 to 1967. Tracy was one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, ranking among the top ten box office draws for almost every year from 1938 to 1951...

 and Lana Turner

Lana Turner

Lana Turner was an American actress.Discovered and signed to a film contract by MGM at the age of sixteen, Turner first attracted attention in They Won't Forget . She played featured roles, often as the ingenue, in such films as Love Finds Andy Hardy...

, directed by George Sidney

George Sidney

George Sidney was an American film director and film producer who worked primarily at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.-Career:...

, and released in 1947.

Timberlane is a minor character in Lewis's novel Kingsblood Royal

Kingsblood Royal

-Synopsis:The protagonist, Neil Kingsblood, a white middle class man, discovers that he is partly of African American descent while researching his family background...

.

Synopsis

Former Congressman and now Judge Cass Timberlane is a middle-aged, incorruptible, highly-respected man who enjoys good books and playing the flute. He falls for Jinny, a much younger girl from a lower class in his small Minnesota town. At first, the marriage is happy, but Jinny becomes bored with the small town and with the judge's friends. She leaves him for an affair with a lawyer, Timberlane's boyhood friend. Eventually abandoned by her lover, Jinny returns to her husband and becomes the good wife. This is Lewis' examination of marriage

Marriage

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

, love, romance, heartache and trust.

Cultural references

Wolcott Gibbs

Wolcott Gibbs

Wolcott Gibbs was an American editor, humorist, theatre critic, playwright and author of short stories, who worked for The New Yorker magazine from 1927 until his death. He is best remembered for his 1936 parody of Time magazine, which skewered the magazine's inverted narrative structure...

 spoofed the novel in The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

as "Shad Ampersand."