The Disinherited, first published in 1974, is one of Matt Cohen's four novels that came to be known as the Salem quartet—stories set in the fictional town of Salem in eastern Ontario, somewhere north of Kingston in the rugged farmland and forest of the Canadian Shield. These are the novels that first brought Matt Cohen to national attention. As with his Governor General's Award-winning novel, Elizabeth and After, The Disinherited is a novel of love and the land and their impact on a family dynasty, of the gradual encroachment of the modern-day city and its developers, and of the family's struggle against the threat of disintegration.