Munsey's Magazine, October 1922

# Munsey's Magazine, October 1922

"Times Have Changed," a novel of contemporary adventure by Elmer Davis, follows Mark O'Rell, principal of Wynwood High School in suburban New Jersey, who finds himself restless in his recently achieved domestic contentment. Once an ambitious journalist in New York with wartime military service, O'Rell now lives in a comfortable bungalow with his wife Marjorie, daughter of the prominent Redman family. A letter from college friend Johnny Zane inviting him to a fraternity dinner in Manhattan—where he might encounter Hinton K. Atlee, a family connection and board of education president—stirs O'Rell's suppressed yearning for urban life. Meanwhile, O'Rell encounters Irene, a troubled eighteen-year-old student who confesses her ambitions for theatrical work in New York while facing pressure from her uncle to work in his lunch room if she fails trigonometry. O'Rell sympathizes with her frustrations, revealing his own conflicted feelings about Wynwood's constraints.