State Fair (novel)
Dust jacket art for 1932 first edition
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| Author | Phil Stong |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Realistic fiction |
| Published | 1932 by Century Co. of Philadelphia |
| ISBN | |
State Fair is a 1932 novel by Phil Stong about an Iowa farm family's visit to the Iowa State Fair, where the family's two teenage children each fall in love, but ultimately break up with their respective new loves and return to their familiar life back on the farm. Thomas Leslie, the author of Iowa State Fair: Country Comes to Town, wrote that the novel State Fair is "a surprisingly dark coming-of-age story that took as its major plot device the effects of the 'worldly temptations' of the Iowa State Fair on a local farming family", capturing tensions between urban Des Moines and rural Iowa.
The novel became a bestseller and established Stong as a popular author. Shortly after its publication, the novel was made into a Hollywood film starring Will Rogers (albeit with the addition of a happy "Hollywood ending" not in the book), and was subsequently adapted for the stage and screen several more times, including as a Rodgers and Hammerstein movie musical in 1945.
The novel follows the Frake family from the fictional town of Brunswick, Iowa. The father, Abel, has a Hampshire boar named "Blue Boy" that he thinks can win the grand championship at the Iowa State Fair. At the beginning of the story, he bets the local Storekeeper that "Blue Boy" will win the grand prize and that the Frakes will all have a good time at the fair and be better off for it when the fair is over. The pessimistic Storekeeper accepts the bet, but also bets that if he (the Storekeeper) loses, something "worse than anything you can think of" will have happened to the Frakes at the fair unbeknownst to Abel.
The mother, Melissa, has a set of pickles and wants to win blue ribbons for them, beating the competition that has won in prior years. Teenage son Wayne has been practicing so he can win at the "hoop-la" ring toss stand and get revenge on the crooked carnival barker who had taken his money and pride in previous years. Teenage daughter Margy just wants to enjoy herself at the fair and take a break from everyday life. Both teenagers are also in the mood for a new romance. Wayne worries that his girlfriend, Eleanor, who has just spent her first year at college and will not be accompanying him to the fair, has gotten too sophisticated for him. Margy meanwhile finds herself bored with her responsible, devoted, but dull boyfriend Harry Ware, who has planned their whole lives as a farm couple already, and will also not be coming to the fair.
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