Dead Lovers Are Faithful Lovers is a tale of stifling passions, marital infidelity, and the empty conventionality of relations between the sexes in Jazz Age America. Set mainly in Atlanta and Richmond, its minimal plot unfolds through a stream-of-consciousness rendering of the thoughts and emotions of two women in love with the same man. Far ahead of its time when it originally appeared in 1928, Dead Lovers Are Faithful Lovers was intended by Frances Newman to be what she felt was one of the few books to tell how women truly think and feel. The novel's psychological subtleties, coupled with its intricate and mannered structure, won it praise from such contemporaries as H. L. Mencken and James Branch Cabell, writers who had already singled out Newman for her strikingly individual and modern style.