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By Love Possessed (novel)By Love Possessed is a novel written by James Gould Cozzens in the middle 1950s. It was published on August 26, 1957, by Harcourt Brace and Company, and became a critically acclaimed best-seller. In 1960, it was awarded the William Dean Howells Medal, an award given every five years to the best novel of the previous five years.

The novel was turned into a feature film in which Lana Turner co-starred.

By Love Possessed was one of Cozzens's "professional novels", whose stories presented fully developed characters and placed a special emphasis on the details of their work.

Plot
The novel is set in the small town of Brocton, Pennsylvania, in roughly the mid-1950s. The story follows Arthur Winner Jr., an attorney, through 49 hours of his life. During this time, he frequently reminisces about earlier times, remembering town residents who have been dead for years, such as Arthur Winner Sr.

Arthur Jr. is a partner in the law firm his father founded in partnership with Noah Tuttle. As a young man, Arthur married Noah's daughter, Hope; they had three children, two sons and a daughter. The elder son, Warren, died during World War II. Hope died a few years later after giving birth to Arthur's daughter. Arthur is now married to a somewhat younger woman named Clarissa, who had been his daughter's tennis coach. The law practice currently consists of Arthur, Noah, and another man named Julius Penrose. It gradually emerges in the course of the story that Arthur had a brief but intense affair with Marjorie Penrose, Julius' wife, after Hope's death.

Two cases preoccupy Arthur during the course of the novel. The first concerns the probate of the estate of Michael McCarthy; the second is the arrest of Ralph Detweiler (brother of the firm's dedicated secretary Helen Detweiler) for rape. Arthur is also called on to deal with a new pastor in the Episcopal Church, who is asking him to take a role in the leadership of the parish.

Arthur also meets with one of Marjorie's friends, a woman named Pratt who wants to discuss Marjorie's interest in converting to Catholicism. (Julius, though not an especially religious Protestant, is fiercely opposed to Catholicism.)

Many years earlier, a trolley line had been built in the town, and Noah Tuttle had encouraged such clients as Michael McCarthy to invest in it. The trolley company went bankrupt, however, due to the rise of the automobile. Noah handled the bankruptcy case and, to the amazement of all, managed to return some money to the investors. The novel, however, begins to hint at a darker side to Noah's brilliance. He ridicules an elderly woman for wanting to move some of her funds from bonds into stocks. He bristles at the suggestion that the endowment of the parish could be transferred to management by the dioceses. During a hearing which Arthur supervises, Noah has an outburst when questioned about the assets of the McCarthy estate.

Arthur concludes that Ralph Detweiler, though selfish and cowardly, is probably innocent of the rape charge, and he expects to have the case dismissed. But Ralph jumps bail and flees to New York. Ralph's sister Helen, obsessed with respectability, commits suicide in shame.

As Arthur examines the records that Helen had been maintaining, he discovers that Noah has been embezzling from the trusts that he managed—this was the source of the money from the bankruptcy settlement. Noah embezzled 0,000 from the "Orcutt bequest" and has since been manipulating the money in his trusts, robbing Peter to pay Paul while attempting to replenish the funds. Arthur also learns that Julius Penrose has been aware of the embezzlement for some time. But Julius urges Arthur to keep quiet, hinting that he is aware of Arthur's affair with his wife, and that he is grateful that he has been silent about that. Arthur contemplates his position, where there are no good choices. He says, "Life, that has unfairly served so many others, at last unfairly serves me."

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