From the author of ‘Blonde’, ‘The Falls’ and ‘We Were the Mulvaneys’, this new novel takes in the themes of race, immigration, family and social mobility, and is Joyce Carol Oates at her storytelling best.
‘The Gravedigger’s Daughter’ tells the tale of Rebecca Schwart, born in the late 1930s to an immigrant family from Nazi Germany, just as they are arriving to America. The family settles in a small, bleak town in upstate New York, where the only job the father can get is as the town gravedigger and caretaker of the cemetery. Soon the town's prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty results in unspeakable tragedy. In the wake of this loss, and in an attempt to put her past behind her, young Rebecca Schwart moves on, across America and through a series of listless marriages, in search of somewhere, and someone, to whom she can belong.
- ISBN10 0007258453
- ISBN13 9780007258451
- Publish Date 6 August 2007 (first published 1 January 2007)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 3 September 2009
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
- Imprint Fourth Estate Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 600
- Language English
- URL http://harpercollins.co.uk