Mildred Pierce is having a bad day. Her husband, a “smallish man” and barely solvent real estate developer, is having a fling with a neighbor. Her children are needy terrors. Caught in the grip of the Great Depression, she bakes cakes for a couple of dollars a pop. Her financial state worsens when, finally, she banishes her wayward spouse.

All that happens in the first few pages of James M. Cain’s 1941 novel Mildred Pierce, which, like his hard-boiled thrillers The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, takes a decidedly bleak view of human nature. (Unlike those two books, the noirest of California noirs, the only corpse to appear in Mildred Pierce dies of natural causes, the victim of a ravaging flu.)

Things quickly go further south for Mildred. She’s got a hefty mortgage to pay and no way to pay it. Her older daughter, preadolescent Veda, has no end of demands even as she scorns those whom she considers “distinctly middle-class,” her 28-year-old mom included. Mildred doesn’t have many marketable skills, but she brushes aside a friend’s suggestion that she sell herself, pausing to reconsider only when a stern counselor at an employment agency recommends that she become a waitress: “You’ve let half your life slip by without learning anything but sleeping, cooking, and setting the table, and that’s all you’re good for.”

As the months go by and the bills mount, she tries to find work, any work. Finally, she surrenders, taking a job in a greasy spoon. She hides the fact from Veda, who eventually finds out, accepting Mildred’s fall from grace only when Mildred assures her that it’s just a step on the path to owning her own restaurant and becoming rich.

Meanwhile, Mildred’s scant funds go to others. Veda needs piano lessons. That corpse—her younger daughter—needs a funeral. Her ex needs pocket money. The supposedly wealthy polo player she takes up with does too, and it’s not the only way he complicates her life.

The pages of Mildred Pierce are filled with a kind of rough poetry (“He lived in a world of dreams,” Cain writes of Mildred’s hapless husband, “lolling by the river, watching the clouds go by”). They also burst with frank depictions of matters that might have shocked sensitive readers 80 years ago: adultery, unabashed sexuality, occasional profanity. Joan Crawford played the part of Mildred in the 1945 film adaptation with a kind of maniacal fury that doesn’t quite fit Cain’s depiction of her, one of many departures from the novel, but Ann Blyth was the perfect Veda, avid to betray.

Cain’s real subject is the vanity of human wishes. Mildred’s husband does not attain happiness with his lover. The restaurant Mildred opens rewards her with plenty of money for a time—but also added pounds and headaches. Veda cons her way into and out of her mother’s life and purse, and disaster befalls everyone who crosses her path. No one wins. Cain’s book is a masterwork of dashed hopes and disappointments, as perfect in its depiction of the grim Depression as The Grapes of Wrath. But if Mildred Pierce doesn’t make you hungry for chicken and waffles….

Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor.