Rent Mildred Pierce

Synopsis

Unlike the movie, the Cain novel features no murder. Spanning the Depression era, it is the story of a suburban California wife and mother. At the beginning of the book, Mildred turns out her husband Bert, who is jobless and philandering. In order to support her two children and herself, she begins working as a waitress, which she finds abhorrent. Eventually, after different profitable liaisons, she starts a restaurant chain. She is subsumed in her work, obsessed by it, defined by it--as she is by her relationship to her daughter Veda. She draws Veda's heightened resentment, because the girl loves her father deeply, and Veda ultimately betrays Mildred.

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