Munsey's Magazine, July 1922

# Catalog Note

"The Land of Turmoil," a serial story by William Slavens McNutt published in July 1922, chronicles contemporary New York society. The narrative opens in Illinois, where college graduate Bob Watson confesses to his father his compulsion to abandon domestic life for adventure. Watson articulates a lifelong psychological drive toward danger and the exotic—describing childhood fascination with a feared pine grove as precursor to his obsession with distant, perilous lands. He reveals to his bewildered father that to manage his impulses while in college, he periodically traveled to Chicago to fight in dangerous dives. Despite paternal pleas that he enter the family coal and lumber business, Watson leaves home with nothing but the clothes he wears, giving away his entire savings to a beggar at the train station. The story explores tension between conventional domesticity and individual passion, framed as Watson's irresistible calling toward adventure in exotic locales.