***

Bibbs is the dreamy, sensitive son of Mr. Sheridan, a cigar-chomping, larger-than-life businessman in the turn-of-the-century American Midwest. Sheridan made his fortune in the rapid industrialization that was overtaking the small towns and cities of America, but Bibbs - named so "mainly through lack of imagination on his mother's part" - is too sickly to help his father in Sheridan's relentless quest for "Bigness."