Gertrude Stein&rsquo;s first published work <i><b>Three Lives</b></i> is divided into three different stories, each one a psychological portrait of a different woman. The Good Anna describes an exacting German house servant; Melanctha explores the love affair of an African-American woman; and The Gentle Lena narrates the fate of a patient German maid. The three narratives are independent of each other, but all are set in the fictional town of Bridgepoint.<br /><br />The innovative style of <i><b>Three Lives</b></i> broke with narrative, linear, and temporal conventions and catapulted Stein to the forefront of the American Modernist movement and inspired such later novelists as Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac.