''The Trial of Martin Ross'' is a novel by the American writer

Alfred Kern Alfred Kern (born Alfred Cohen, August 8, 1924 – June 2, 2009) was an American novelist and professor. Formative years Born in Alliance, Ohio, he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1946 during World War II. He legally changed h ...

. It is set in the late 1960s over

Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden and ...

weekend in Buchanan,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

(a fictionalized Meadville, north of

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

). Martin Ross and his wife Janet celebrate the holiday alone and for the first time without their three children, now grown. As a storm dumps a heavy snow, Ross, a liberal lawyer in a conservative town, reads the proofs of his son's first novel, set in a fictionalized Buchanan. Quickly he realizes the novel is an indictment of himself and his life's work, and he struggles to defend himself to his son across the generational chasm.

References

1971 American novels Novels set in Pennsylvania Fiction set in the 1960s W. W. Norton & Company books Meadville, Pennsylvania {{1970s-novel-stub