A masterly work from a writer with "the uncanny ability to give us a
cinemascopic vision of her America" (National Review), A Garden of
Earthly Delights is the opening stanza in what would become one of the
most powerful and engrossing story arcs in literature.
Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels
that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young
Americans. In A Garden of Earthly Delights, Oates presents one of her
most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole, the beautiful daughter of
Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers. Desperate to rise above her haphazard
existence of violence and poverty, determined not to repeat her mother's
life, Clara struggles for independence by way of her relationships with
four very different men: her father, a family man turned itinerant
laborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, who rescues
Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love; Revere, a
wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; and Swan, Clara's
son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burden of his mother's
ambition.
A Garden of Earthly Delights is the first novel in the Wonderland
Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, Expensive
People, them, and Wonderland, are also available from the Modern
Library.