Man Alone

In George Agnew Chamberlain's novel Man Alone, Thomas Strayton walks from northern New Jersey to South Jersey with his young son Torquay on his shoulders. They arrive to start a new life in the glass industry of Hopetown, a fictionalized version of Bridgeton, New Jersey. The embittered Thomas has turned against women-his wife left him for another man-and the father's rage manifests itself when he smashes an apple to show Torquay the "black core" to which he adds, "these be women." The lesson that women are "rotten at the core" would take long years-the length of the novel-for Torquay to reject. This plot line is woven into a story of glass making for which South Jersey was famous in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This is a South Jersey Culture & History Center republication of Chamberlain's third novel set in southern New Jersey with a new foreword by Jim Bergmann.