Fail

   At least 3 times, over a span of several decades,I have tried to read, enjoy and complete a novel by Edna Ferber.
   She was one of the most wildly popular writers of quality mass-market fiction in the middle decades of the 20th Century. Recently, I tried again with her first major hit novel, "So Big", published in 1924. I could not make the story, the writing, the characters, pass my 30-page rule. It made me think a little of books read in the past year: "A Reliable Wife" and "Devil in the White City", with the references to Chicago in the late 1800's, but without the depth and maturity.