Literary Fiction · DarkA family's story from a violent teenage romance in the 1930s to the Detroit riots of 1967
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Loretta and her children live through decades in a midwestern city and Detroit, up to the 1967 riots
The novel begins in the 1930s, when Loretta and her brother Brock are teenagers and a romance turns violent. It follows Loretta, her husband Howard Wendall and her children Jules, Maureen and Betty through later decades in a midwestern city and in Detroit, including the 1967 Detroit riots. Vanguard Press published it in June 1969.
More about this book
Who
Loretta, her brother Brock, her husband Howard Wendall and her children Jules, Maureen and Betty.
World
A midwestern city on a canal in the 1930s, then Detroit, up to the 1967 riots.
What makes it different
It is the third novel in Oates's Wonderland Quartet, after A Garden of Earthly Delights and Expensive People.
Feel
Long and intense, at 508 pages in hardcover. It won the 1970 National Book Award for Fiction.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- themWikipedia