This new volume of AMERICANA eBooks, part of the Szeged Series in American Studies (SZESAS), addresses the issue of US society and culture at the threshold of crisis and healing in a selection of American literary representations. American society and culture has mostly been fragmented along many fracture lines, and the volume offers a collection of essays that focus on literary representations of these. The papers explore a diverse range of texts from highly canonized to almost marginal by interrogating the possibilities of transformation, agency, and the limits to healing. The discussions target the potential agency literary characters have in the articulation, planning, and eventual transformation of their life trajectories, inviting diverse theoretical frameworks for analyzing these scenarios.