Mildred Pierce

Mildred Pierce is a psychological drama by James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1941.A story of “social inequity and opportunity in America" set during the Great Depression, Mildred Pierce follows the trajectory of a lower-middle class divorcee with two children in her tragic struggle to achieve financial and personal success. The novel is one of four major works Cain wrote featuring opera as a key component in the plot (Serenade (1937), Career in C Major (1938) and The Moth (1948) are the others.)Mildred Pierce is Cain’s first effort to write a novel in the third-person narrative form, a departure from his earlier works of the 1930s, all of them confessional narratives written in the first-person.