Oates, Joyce Carol

The Gravedigger's Daughter

ISBN: 9780061236822
New York, NY: Ecco/ Harper Collins, 2007. First Edition. Hardcover. "In 1936 the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a former high school teacher, is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. After local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty result in unspeakable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca, begins her astonishing pilgrimage into America, an odyssey of erotic risk and imaginative daring, ingenious self-invention, and, in the end, a bittersweet- but very "American"- triumph. "You are born here, they will not hurt you"- so the gravedigger has predicted for his daughter, which will turn out to be true." (from front flap) The thirty-sixth(!) doorstopper novel by Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938), the acclaimed, much-honored & jaw-droppingly prolific American author. Indeed there are "unspeakable" happenings & predicaments here as only the latter-day-Gothic-on-steroids imagination of Oates can pour out in her sui generis style that is all-too-fully in tune with the actual modern human, especially American, condition. Hardcover in unclipped first-issue dust jacket (with $26.95 price & "0607" printed at front flap), first edition as stated on copyright page, first printing as indicated by number sequence thereon. An exemplary & essential collectible in the vast Oates canon, in its rarest original trade form. Book in very fine condition with only a touch of wear & a few tiny bumps, creases at edges & corners of front, back covers & spine; otherwise substantially mint inside & out. Dust jacket very fine with only a few tiny bumps, creases at edges & corners of front, back covers, spine & flaps. An extra handling fee will be added for shipping due to the weight of this item. Very Fine / Very Fine. [Item #5790]

Price: $30.00