From an orphan with a clubfoot, Philip Carey grows into an impressionable young man with a voracious appetite for adventure and knowledge. Then he falls obsessively in love, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever.

A gorgeous read, as interesting and valuable at the beginning as at the end...compact with the experiences, the dreams, the hopes, the fears, the disillusionment, the ruptures, and the philosophizing of a strangely starved soul, it is a beacon light by which the wanderer may be guided. -- The New Republic