Carthage: A Novel
After her lavishly imagined, supernatural historical novel, The Accursed (2013), Oates turns in the latest of her intensely magnified studies of a family in crisis and the agony of a misfit girl. Zeno Mayfield, a former mayor of the small Adirondack town of Carthage, and his wife, Arlette, have two daughters. Juliet is as good as she is beautiful. Cressida is &#x201C;difficult.&#x201D; Smart, spiky, gnomish, and artistic, &#x201C;inky-frizzy haired&#x201D; Cressida may be autistic. Sweet Juliet gets engaged to handsome, civic-minded Brett Kincaid, who promptly enlists after 9/11. He returns severely injured, horribly scarred, and deeply traumatized. Then Cressida disappears, and grief decimates her loving family. Flashbacks to Brett&#x2019;s hellish experiences in Iraq carry a powerful indictment of war crimes, while a harrowing visit to a maximum-security prison by an enigmatic investigative writer exposes the horrors of incarceration and capital punishment. Oates&#x2019; eerie, plangent, and gripping tale of a missing 19-year-old outcast and a betrayed warrior pivots on her interpretations of Cressida&#x2019;s medieval namesake, who abandoned one soldier for another, and Zeno&#x2019;s paradox concerning &#x201C;infinity within the finite&#x201D; as &#x201C;a state of perpetual yearning.&#x201D;      HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Oates will stay in the spotlight as The Accursed comes out in paperback, and Carthage is vigorously promoted in all media formats. --Donna Seaman