Billie Hawker, a young New York painter, returns to his parents’ farm for the summer. There he meets up with a fellow cynical and mocking writer, Hollanden, who is staying at the inn where a number of society girls are staying. One of them, Miss Fanhall, pretends to ignore the young man’s clumsy expressions of interest. But one evening, she plucks a violet from a small bouquet and hands it to Billie, who doesn’t know how to translate the gesture. Back in New York, he meets up with the bohemian woman who is building an impenetrable wall between them. Unaware that he’s erecting another in front of the young model whose advances bother him…
Just as La Conquête du courage offered an iconoclastic reading of a Civil War episode, La Troisième Violette, inspired by Stephen Crane’s (1871-1900) lean years at the Art Students’ League, subverts the conventions of the sentimental novel. The novel is complemented by four Croquis new-yorkais, in which the irony of a writer who was also a brilliant reporter excels.