The Gravedigger's Daughter

Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1936, the Schwarts immigrate to a small town in upstate New York. Here the father--a former high school teacher--is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. When local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty give rise to an unthinkable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca heads out into America. Embarking upon an extraordinary odyssey of erotic risk and ingenious self-invention, she seeks renewal, redemption, and peace--on the road to a bittersweet and distinctly "American" triumph.

Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Publisher: Ecco Press
Published: 04/01/2008
Pages: 624
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.07lbs
Size: 8.04h x 5.54w x 1.11d
ISBN: 9780061236839

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6
Point Value: 30
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 115174 / Gravedigger's Daughter

Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Finalist

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 05/11/2008 pg. 36
Entertainment Weekly 08/08/2008 pg. 72

About the Author
Oates, Joyce Carol: -

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.