New hope

Life in New Hope recaptures a feeling of youth that would seem overly idealistic if it were not for Suckow's unflinching realism. As seen through the eyes of its Edenic main characters - Clarence Miller, son of the town's banker and chief booster, and Delight Greenwood, daughter of the Congregational minister who serves New Hope during the two years of the novel - the town itself is the protagonist. Death, crime, and heartbreak intervene, but a sense of freedom and possibility, "where all were to share equally in the boundlessness of light and hope," always illuminates the town.