Satirizing small-town life, Main Street is perhaps Sinclair Lewis's most famous book [citation needed] and led in part to his eventual 1930 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The story is set in the small town of Gopher Prairie, a fictionalized version of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis's hometown, during the 1910s.

It relates the life and struggles of Carol Milford Kennicott, a self-made young woman with a strong personality, as she comes into conflict with the small-town mentality of the residents of Gopher Prairie.

Carol is filled with disdain for the town's physical ugliness and smug conservatism and immediately formulates plans to remake Gopher Prairie.

She speaks with its members about progressive changes, joins women's clubs, distributes literature, and holds a party to liven up Gopher Prairie's inhabitants.

After a political meeting of the Nonpartisan League is broken up by local authorities, Carol leaves her husband and moves to Washington, D.C. to become a clerk in a wartime government agency but she eventually returns.

[7] Because Lewis and his book had become so popular, high-school sports teams from his hometown began to be called the Main Streeters as early as the 1925–26 school year.