Carthage

Carthage
Joyce Carol Oates

A young girl’s disappearance rocks a community and a family, in this stirring examination of grief, faith, justice and the atrocities of war, from literary legend Joyce Carol Oates.Zeno Mayfield’s daughter has disappeared into the night, gone missing in the wilds of the Adirondacks. But when the community of Carthage joins a father’s frantic search for the girl, they discover instead the unlikeliest of suspects – a decorated Iraq War veteran with close ties to the Mayfield family. As grisly evidence mounts against the troubled war hero, the family must wrestle with the possibility of having lost a daughter forever.‘Carthage’ plunges us deep into the psyche of a wounded young Corporal, haunted by unspeakable acts of wartime aggression, while unraveling the story of a disaffected young girl whose exile from her family may have come long before her disappearance.Dark and riveting, ‘Carthage’ is a powerful addition to the Joyce Carol Oates canon, one that explores the human capacity for violence, love and forgiveness, and asks it it’s ever truly possible to come home again.

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_a2e81353-7e21-5c66-b4ac-2c8b7ff283ab)

Fourth Estate

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First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014

FIRST EDITION

Copyright © The Ontario Review 2014

Joyce Carol Oates asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

Cover design by Allison Saltzman

Cover photograph © Denis Jr. Tangney/Getty images

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007485741

Ebook Edition © January 2014 ISBN: 9780007485765

Version 2014-11-18

DEDICATION (#ulink_456ca842-a0f8-55ec-9aae-639a33911f5e)

To Charlie Gross

my husband and first reader

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#ulink_0350fc82-62ce-5eec-bf67-354264c652b5)

A shortened version of chapter two appeared in Fighting Words, edited by Roddy Doyle, 2011.

Thanks to former Marine Mariette Kalinowski, Sergeant, USMC (ret.), and to Martin Quinn for reading this manuscript with special care as Hertog Research Fellows at Hunter College, and thanks to Greg Johnson for his continued friendship, sharp eye and ear, and impeccable literary judgment.

EPIGRAPH (#ulink_1727e5f3-e524-5769-aedd-53d6f973abb0)

“Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then God will send you life again.”

—SONIA TO RASKOLNIKOV, IN CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

I don’t feel young now. I think I am old in my heart.

—AMERICAN IRAQ WAR VETERAN, 2005

CONTENTS

Cover (#u70246efd-b8d7-584c-8d7a-1c6403efc6eb)

Copyright (#ulink_3eaf7f9c-6a72-5ffd-814b-c38dd4e4db36)

Dedication (#ulink_7950aa73-e95d-53f0-9d86-aa4c65ae92c1)

Acknowledgments (#ulink_8e25f05f-af06-554d-a908-f3060ee3dfeb)

Epigraph (#ulink_409d7b26-86ba-52bd-a50e-d0a6b49e83e1)

Prologue (#ulink_7e302103-6736-5fdd-aa25-f2499a0afa71)

Part I: Lost Girl (#ulink_6f5f6c6b-5fde-5ef9-8eb9-a248d1783f08)

One - The Search (#ulink_e1621c6b-f242-512f-a815-8243aadfc9fd)

Two - Bride-to-Be (#ulink_483c53ad-3812-5d46-9139-caf74fc897bf)

Three - The Father (#ulink_c70ccc4a-96bb-5f6d-921d-c508b8ba8190)

Four - Descending and Ascending (#ulink_2a6eed4d-b81b-5b06-813a-b63e8b24dbe8)

Five (#ulink_0a581d2e-f3bb-5755-ad1e-a2dad9929ae4)

Six - The Corporal in the Land of the Dead (#litres_trial_promo)

Seven - The Corporal’s Confession (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight - The Corporal’s Letter (#litres_trial_promo)