ABOUT
THE BOOK

My Heart Laid Bare is a striking departure for Joyce Carol Oates: a sweeping epic novel of the fortunes and misfortunes of a family of enterprising confidence artists in 19th-century America. Mythic in scope, it is Oate’s most daring work yet – a stunning tale of crime and transgression, and of a mysterious and tragic woman whose secret history resonates from one century to another – with profound moral cosequences. The time is 1891. The man is Abraham Licht, a confidence artist who has arrived in Muirkirk to establish his criminal dynasty: Thurston and Harwood, the sons who emulate their dashing father – only to be drawn into murder; beautiful Millicent, her father’s equal in The Game, his superior in the more dangerous game of familial control; and Elisha – the adopted son – Abraham’s true heir in talent and ambition, cruelly banished from his father’s affections. Like a biblical patriarch, Licht sees his immortality in his children. But his own mortality lies in the far-off forgotten past, in lady’s maid Sarah Licht. Masquerading as nobility in stolen jewels and finery in 18th-century England, exiled to America to avoid the hangman’s noose, she would undergo many transformations – belle of the Carolinas, widow, governess, and midwife – before meeting her fate in the marshy wilds of Old Muirkirk. It is Sarah’s spirit that haunts their story, as Abraham and his clan move with consummate ease through the newly expanding country, from scheme to dazzling scheme. Caught between the ghosts of the past and those that await him in the future, Abraham will live to see the dark, unholy secrets of the soul bared at last, as brother turns against brother, lover against lover, blood against blood. From the Virgin provinces of New York State to the rough-and-tumble western frontier … from the political backrooms of Washington, D.C., to the Atlantic City of the Gilded Age … from Carnegie Hall to Harlem in the twenties and thirties, My Heart Laid Bare is a sumptuous novel of ingenious invention – one imbued with a mesmerizing narrative voice.