Ragtime Summary
E. L. Doctorow

Ragtime Summary

Section I

Ragtime is a novel about three families living in the early years of the twentieth century and how their members' separate lives intertwine within a wide, colorful quilt of personalities, some real and some fictional. The book contains many different plotlines that begin and end in a jumble. It starts at the home of one family in New Rochelle, a New York suburb. The father of the house owns a company that manufactures fireworks and parade decorations, things used mostly on patriotic occasions. Father, as he is called, lives in the house with Mother and the Little Boy; also living there are Mother's Younger Brother and Grandfather. Introduced in the first chapter is the true historical story of Evelyn Nesbit, whose husband, millionaire Harry K. Thaw, shot her former lover, famed architect Stanford White, in a crowded restaurant one night in 1906. Younger Brother has pictures of Nesbit taped to... View more of the Ragtime Summary