Mudwoman

Mudwoman
Joyce Carol Oates

A haunting new novel from one of America’s most prolific and respected novelists.Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flats of the Black Snake River. Cast aside, Mudgirl survives by an accident of fate - or destiny. After her rescue, she will slowly forget her own origin, her past erased, her future uncertain. The well-meaning couple who adopt Mudgirl quarantine her poisonous history behind the barrier of their Quaker values: compassion, modesty, and hard work - seemingly sealing it off forever. But the bulwark of the present proves surprisingly vulnerable to the agents of the past.Meredith ‘M.R.’ Neukirchen is the first woman president of a prestigious Ivy League university whose commitment to her career and moral fervor for her role are all-consuming. Involved with a secret lover whose feelings for her are teasingly undefined, concerned with the intensifying crisis of the American political climate as the United States edges toward a declaration of war with Iraq, M.R. is confronted with challenges to her professional leadership which test her in ways she could not have expected. The fierce idealism and intelligence that delivered her from a more conventional life in her upstate New York hometown now threaten to undo her.A reckless trip upstate thrusts M.R. Neukirchen into an unexpected psychic collision with Mudgirl and the life M.R. believes she has left behind. A powerful exploration of the enduring claims of the past, ‘Mudwoman’ is at once a psychic ghost story and an intimate portrait of an individual who breaks - but finds a way to heal herself.

Mudwoman

Joyce Carol Oates

Dedication

For Charlie Gross,

my husband and

first reader

Epigraph

What is man? A ball of snakes.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE,

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting,

Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them,

And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.

WALT WHITMAN,

“Here the Frailest Leaves of Me”

Time is a way of preventing all things from happening at once.

ANDRE LITOVIK,

“The Evolving Universe: Origin, Age & Fate”

Contents

Cover (#ulink_c62f2f5d-a5b2-5b88-8907-c8898ac97c32)

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Mudgirl in the Land of Moriah.

Mudwoman’s Journey. The Black River Café.

Mudgirl Saved by the King of the Crows.

Mudwoman Confronts an Enemy. Mudwoman’s Triumph.

Mudgirl Reclaimed. Mudgirl Renamed.

Mudwoman Fallen. Mudwoman Arisen. Mudwoman in the Days of Shock and Awe.

Mudgirl in “Foster Care.” Mudgirl Receives a Gift.

Mudwoman Makes a Promise. And Mudwoman Makes a Discovery.

Mudgirl Has a New Home. Mudgirl Has a New Name.

Mudwoman Mated.

Mudgirl, Cherished.

Mudwoman, Bereft.

Mudgirl, Desired.

Mudwoman, Challenged.

Mudgirl: Betrayal.

Mudwoman in Extremis.

Mudwoman Ex Officio.

Mudwoman Amid the Nebulae.

Mudwoman Flung to Earth.

Mudwoman Bride.

Mudwoman Finds a Home.

Mudwoman Encounters a Lost Love.

Mudwoman: Moons beyond Rings of Saturn.

Mudwoman Not Struck by Lightning. Mudwoman Saved from Nightmare.

Mudwoman at Star Lake. Mudwoman at Lookout Point.