McTeague: A Story of San Francisco

McTeague by Frank Norris tells the story of a couples courtship and marriage and their subsequent descent into poverty violence and finally murder as the result of jealousy and avarice. McTeague is a graphic depiction of urban American life centering around McTeague a dentist practicing in San Francisco. At first content with his life and friendship with an ambitious man named Marcus McTeague eventually courts and marries Trina a parsimonious young woman who wins a large sum of money in a lottery. The greed of the majority of the characters in the novel creates a chain of events that lead to many painful gruesome deaths.