by JoyceCarolOates (Author)
Two families. Two faces of America. An act of violence with far-reaching consequences.
Gus Voorhees is a pioneer in the advancement of women's reproductive rights and a controversial abortion provider in the American Midwest. One morning as he arrives at his clinic, he is ambushed by a hardline Christian, Luther Dunphy, and shot dead.
The killing leaves in its wake two fatherless families: the Voorheeses, who are affluent, highly educated, secular and pro-choice, and the Dunphys, their opposite on all counts.
When the daughters of the two families, Naomi Voorhees and Dawn Dunphy, glimpse each other at the trial of Luther Dunphy, their initial response is mutual hatred. But their lives are tangled together forever by what has happened, and throughout the years to come and the events that follow, neither can quite forget the other...
`The story of Trump's America' Daily Mail
`Page-turning, gripping, full of unexpected twists' Observer
`The most relevant book of Oates's half-century-long career . . . a masterpiece' Washington Post
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 752
Edition: First American Edition
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 01 Jun 2017
ISBN 10: 0008221677
ISBN 13: 9780008221676
`Page-turning, gripping, full of unexpected twists' Observer
`The story of Trump's America' Daily Mail
`Icily subtle ... at its spine-tingling best when staring into the dark, a sliver away from the Gothic' Spectator
`Icily subtle ... at its spine-tingling best when staring into the dark, a sliver away from the Gothic' Spectator
`A magnificent story of two broken families, both steeped in grief' Independent
`The most relevant book of Oates's half-century-long career . . . To enter this masterpiece is to become invested in Oates's search for some semblance of atonement, secular or divine' Washington Post
`Oates's American saga captivates because it exists within an actual drama playing out across the country. A graceful and excruciating story of two families who do not live very far apart, but exist in different realities' USA Today
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Accursed. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.