Horatio Alger Jr. (1) (1832–1899)

I guess there's a first time for everything. I really disliked this one. The "hero" was a little hoodlum and I honestly didn't give a crap what happened to him.

Not one of his better efforts. Jack was kind of a prick. His Aunt Rachel was a serious downer, but he was downright rude to her. Most of Alger's characters thus far have been extremely noble, but that does not describe young Jack. The story is of a poor family whose fortunes change when a baby is left at their doorstep and what happens a few years later when an evil woman comes into their life.

Very formulaic (most of them are) but that doesn't stop it from being a good story. This one has young Herbert Carter and his widowed mother in a bind over scraping enough money up to pay the interest on the mortgage, a greedy investor who tries to foreclose and his son who is a pompous jerk and snob. Herbert gets helped along the way by a small legacy from an elderly relative and a timely job helping a young man with poor eyes in his studies. Typical Alger stuff, but I liked it.

This was a rare clunker in the Alger oeuvre. There really wasn't much to the story and no real tension or crisis for the hero as is Alger's normal M.O. On top of that, the "good guys" really piled on in trying to make a fool out of the "bad guy" whose only sin was snobbery. There was a meanness that I haven't noticed in others of his works.