The main character of The Marne is a teenage American boy living in Paris. Too young to enlist for the First Battle of the Marne, he and his family return to America. But, four years later, he is eighteen years old and becomes a Red Cross ambulance driver and participates in the Second Battle of the Marne.
The Marne was published a month after the war ended. Although initial sales were promising, they quickly tapered off. Wharton, who was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her wartime efforts, wrote to her editor that she was bewildered “at finding that a public whose own sons and brothers have been in the war should already have ceased to take an interest in it.”
Published in December 1918