La hija del sepulturero

In 1936, the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in the United States. The father, a high school teacher, is lowered to the only job he has access to: gravedigger and cemetery guard. The local prejudices and emotional weakness of the Schwarts cause a terrible family tragedy. Rebecca, the gravedigger's daughter, then begins her surprising pilgrimage through "deep America", an odyssey of erotic risk and intrepid imagination that will force her to reinvent herself. Joyce Carol Oates has created an exceptionally moving and provocative masterpiece of mythical and domestic realism - an intimate testimony to the resilience of the individual. In this prodigious novel, violence acts as a beacon illuminating a culture and an era.