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Title: A good historic look at social taboos in the 1940s
Review: Valley of Decision is a book about the forbidden love between a steel magnate's son and the family's Irish-American upstairs maid. But it's not at all romantic because the star-crossed lovers are caught up in maintaining the strict and rigid separation between the rich and the poor, the served and the servant. Neither character can get past the social taboos and find happiness in each other's love. But the book is still compelling and worth reading to understand just how conventional and rigid the lines between the classes still were, so recently. It could be rewritten today, with gay or married would-be lovers who can't overcome social pressures and let themselves be happy. I'd read it again, and I can't say that about most books I read.
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