A Garden of Earthly Delights (Virago Modern Classics)

Description

In A Garden of Earthly Delights, Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole, the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers. Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence and poverty, determined not to repeat her mother’s life, Clara struggles for independence by way of her relationships with four very different men: her father, a family man turned itinerant laborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, who rescues Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love; Revere, a wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; and Swan, Clara’s son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burden of his mother’s ambition. A Garden of Earthly Delights is the first novel in the Wonderland Quartet. Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans.

First Sentence

On that day many years ago a rattling Ford truck carrying twenty-nine farmworkers and their children sideswiped a local truck carrying hogs to Little Rock on a rain-slick country highway.

Subjects

Other Editions

• A Garden of Earthly Delights (Virago Modern Classics)PaperbackVirago Press Ltd2000-07-06
• A garden of earthly delights.Vanguard Press1967-01-01
• A garden of earthly delightsFawcett Publications1967-01-01
• A garden of earthly delightsVanguard Press1967-01-01
• A garden of earthly delights.Fawcett1969-01-01
• A garden of earthly delightsOrion Publishing Group, Limited1970-01-01