Little Bird of Heaven
by Joyce Carol Oates
- Publication
- First published 2009
- ISBN
- 9780061959691, 9780061829840, 9780007358212
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Sign inJoyce Carol Oates returns with a dark, romantic, and captivating tale, set in the Great Lakes region of upstate New York-the territory of her remarkably successful New York Times bestseller The Gravedigger's Daughter. Set in the mythical small city of Sparta, New York, this searing, vividly rendered exploration of the mysterious conjunction of erotic romance and tragic violence in late-twentieth-century America returns to the emotional and geographical terrain of acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates's previous bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and The Gravedigger's Daughter. When a young wife and mother named Zoe Kruller is found brutally murdered, the Sparta police target two primary suspects, her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her longtime lover, Eddy Diehl. In turn, the Krullers' son, Aaron, and Eddy Diehl's daughter, Krista, become obsessed with each other, each believing the other's father is guilty. Told in halves in the very different voices of Krista and Aaron, Little Bird of Heaven is a classic Oates novel in which the lyricism of intense sexual love is intertwined with the anguish of loss, and tenderness is barely distinguishable from cruelty.
Prize history
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