His Family, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Ernest Poole tells the story of a middle-class family in New York City in the 1910s. The family’s patriarch, widower Roger Gale, struggles to deal with the way his daughters and grandchildren respond to the changing society. Each of his daughters responds in a distinctively different way to the circumstances of their lives, forcing Roger into attempting to calm the increasingly challenging family disputes that erupt.
His Family was praised by many critics at the time of its publication. The Oakland Tribune, in its review on May 27, 1917, said “in this story of Roger Gale’s family, Ernest Poole has pictured remarkably well present-day Americans. It is significant, intellectual and stimulating--a story of today.†The New York Times profiled the book in its review of “notable fiction†for 1917, calling it “a fine successor to The Harbor [Poole’s first novel].â€