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Illustrated portrait of Mary Jessup Greenhill

A character in It Can't Happen Here

Mary Jessup Greenhill

Mary is Doremus’s elder daughter and Fowler Greenhill’s wife.

The book

Cover of It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
It Can't Happen HereSinclair Lewis, 1935

An American dictatorship arrives through elections, promises, resentment, and a leader who insists only he can fix the country.

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Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Mary is Doremus’s elder daughter and Fowler Greenhill’s wife. After Swan orders Fowler’s execution, grief turns her toward direct revenge. She trains as a pilot and crashes her aircraft into Swan’s plane, killing herself and the officials aboard. Her act damages the regime locally but leaves her child without either parent.

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