author
Catharine Brody
1900–1962
Drawn to stories about work, ambition, and the uneasy promise of getting ahead, this early 20th-century American writer moved from journalism into fiction with a sharp eye for city life. Her novels look closely at women trying to make their way in modern workplaces and at families strained by the Depression.
1 Audiobook
West of Fifth
by Catharine Brody
About the author
Catharine Brody was an American writer born in 1900 and died in 1962. Surviving records about her life are limited, but library and publishing sources connect her with several novels from the 1920s and 1930s, including Newspaper Girls, Babe Evanson, West of Fifth, Cash Item, and Nobody Starves.
Before turning to novels, she appears to have worked as a newspaper and magazine writer. An NYU archive preserving her "Job Hunting" reporting describes her as an able and experienced reporter who traveled with very little money and wrote vividly about the hardships and possibilities of looking for work.
That background helps explain the feel of her fiction. West of Fifth follows a young woman moving through New York's newsrooms and publicity offices, while Nobody Starves centers on a working-class couple in Depression-era Detroit. Even in the small record that remains, Brody comes across as a writer interested in modern work, social pressure, and what ambition can cost.