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2014 Longlist

Mudwoman

ABOUT
THE BOOK

Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flats of the Black Snake River. Cast aside, Mudgirl survives by an accident of fate – or destiny. Only when she is adopted by a Quaker family does she begin to suppress those painful memories.
Meredith ‘M. R.’ Neukirchen is the first woman president of a prestigious Ivy League university whose commitment to her career and moral fervor are all-consuming. But with an emergent political crisis and a prolonged secret love affair, M. R. has to confront challenges to her professional leadership which test her in ways she could not have expected. The fierce idealism and intelligence that delivered her from a more conventional life in her hometown now threaten to undo her.
When she makes a trip upstate, M. R. Neukirchen is thrust into an unexpected psychic collision with Mudgirl and the life M. R. believes she has left behind. A powerful exploration of the enduring claims of the past, ‘Mudwoman’ is at once a psychic ghost story and the heartbreaking portrait of an individual who breaks – but finds a way to heal herself.

 

 

Librarian’s Comments

An unusual psychic ghost story in an introspective novel.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Joyce
Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist, critic, playwright, poet and author of short stories and one of America’s most highly respected literary figures. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including We Were the Mulvaneys, which was an Oprah Book Club Choice, and Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.

Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist, critic, playwright, poet and author of short stories and one of America’s most highly respected literary figures. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including We Were the Mulvaneys, which was an Oprah Book Club Choice, and Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

An unusual psychic ghost story in an introspective novel.

-Biblioteques de Barcelona

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
01/01/2012
Publisher
Fourth Estate

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