Becoming Sinclair Lewis

by Dave Simpkins

“How do we become who we are anyway?” asks Sinclair Lewis biographer Richard Lingeman in his Foreword to this fresh look at the early life and young adulthood of the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. “How did a skinny, voluble, dreamy, acne-complexioned, paprika-haired, Yale-educated country doctor’s son named Harry Lewis from Sauk Centre,Minnesota, become the world-class American author Sinclair Lewis?”To answer this question, Dave Simpkins, Lewis scholar and newspaper publisher from Sauk Centre, spent ten years researching and writing on this passion until his untimely death in 2018. That’s when his close friend, Jim Umhoefer, agreed to pick up the baton to facilitate the completion and publication of the book. Another of Dave’s friends, Sally Parry of the Sinclair Lewis Society, enlisted the help of Lewis scholars from around the country to pore over the text to ensure its authenticity. The result is an engaging, readable examination of the chapters of young Harry’s life, from his prairie village youth to the dawn of his world-wide literary ascendance with the publication of his breakthrough novel, "Main Street."

Paperback

Published January 1, 2020