Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart - Softcover

In addition to many prize-winning and bestselling novels, including We Were the Mulvaneys, Black Water, Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart, and Broke Heart Blues, Joyce Carol Oates is the author of a number of works of gothic fiction including Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque, a World Fantasy Award nominee; and Zombie, winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel, awarded by the Horror Writers' Association. In 1994, Oates received the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award in Horror Fiction. She is the editor of American Gothic Tales. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

In 1956 in upstate New York, a murder committed in rage binds the lives of a fifteen-year-old white woman and a seventeen-year-old black man forever. Their casual, school acquaintance takes on another dimension as they decide, without words, not to confess the crime. It's a decision that takes a toll on each: for one it means an erosion of self-esteem, for the other it creates a smug but false confidence that they got away with it. Depicting children who come from homes that are struggling financially and emotionally to get by, Joyce Carol Oates explores, through black and white, male and female, and parent and child voices, the impact that parents' decisions have on their children and that children's choices have on their future lives. In this small, industrial town before the Civil Right's movement of the 1960's, the issue of race both confuses and defines many of the characters' actions. Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart looks closely into these young peoples' lives: why they remained silent about the murder, why they felt they had no other options, and what it cost them. At times the reader may want to reach through the pages and shake these people, tell them to see a bigger picture; at the same time, it's hard not to feel absorbed in the characters lives, as though we are making their choices with them. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith