Riven Rock

by T. C Boyle (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.50

  This extraordinary love story, based on historical characters and written with Boyle's customary brilliance and wit, follows the lives of two scarred creatures living in a magical age. It is the turn of the century. Stanley McCormick, the twenty-nine-year-old heir to the great Reaper fortune, meets and marries Katherine Dexter, a woman of 'power, beauty, wealth and prestige'. Two years later, Stanley falls victim to a tormenting sexual mania and schizophrenia, and is imprisoned in the massive forbidding mansion known as Riven Rock. He spends the next two decades under the control of a succession of psychiatrists, all of whom forbid any contact with women. Yet Katherine Dexter, now famous as a champion for women's suffrage and Planned Parenthood, remains strong in her belief that someday her husband will return to her whole.

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.50

  Geneva, 1904 - Newlyweds Katherine Dexter and Stanley McCormick stand for their picture on the grounds of Prangins, Katherine's chateau in Switzerland. She is 29, the first female graduate in the sciences of M.I.T. and a leader in the budding Women's Movement. He is the youngest son of Cyrus and Nettie McCormick, reluctant heir to a fortune built on the Reaper. Socialite and millionaire, they are the match of the year -- and they seem to have fallen in love. But Stanley isn't well. He sees things, hears voices, finds himself unable to control his violent outbursts toward women. Shortly after the marriage, he is diagnosed as a schizophrenic and sexual maniac, and his doctors - the best money can buy - lock him away at Riven Rock. He is forbidden the company of women - above all, his wife. Katherine can only watch her husband and wait, crouched outside among the begonias with her binoculars, like a field biologist studying the habits of some rare, wild animal. Yet she returns every year, laden with gifts and news of the outside world, continually hopeful: one day, she believes, one of the psychiatrists she enlists will return Stanley to her, free of demons, a yearned-for lover. In the hands of T. Coraghessan Boyle, these real characters out of American history are transformed into rich mythic creations whose tortured love and deep sense of fidelity, set against a backdrop of wealth and privilege, will break your heart.

• New

  Paperback
  2001

  $23.48

  Geneva, 1904 - Newlyweds Katherine Dexter and Stanley McCormick stand for their picture on the grounds of Prangins, Katherine's chateau in Switzerland. She is 29, the first female graduate in the sciences of M.I.T. and a leader in the budding Women's Movement. He is the youngest son of Cyrus and Nettie McCormick, reluctant heir to a fortune built on the Reaper. Socialite and millionaire, they are the match of the year -- and they seem to have fallen in love. But Stanley isn't well. He sees things, hears voices, finds himself unable to control his violent outbursts toward women. Shortly after the marriage, he is diagnosed as a schizophrenic and sexual maniac, and his doctors - the best money can buy - lock him away at Riven Rock. He is forbidden the company of women - above all, his wife. Katherine can only watch her husband and wait, crouched outside among the begonias with her binoculars, like a field biologist studying the habits of some rare, wild animal. Yet she returns every year, laden with gifts and news of the outside world, continually hopeful: one day, she believes, one of the psychiatrists she enlists will return Stanley to her, free of demons, a yearned-for lover. In the hands of T. Coraghessan Boyle, these real characters out of American history are transformed into rich mythic creations whose tortured love and deep sense of fidelity, set against a backdrop of wealth and privilege, will break your heart.