In this mesmerizing, funny, chilling novel, the setting is a small town in the
1940s Midwest, the subject the heart of a wounded and ferociously moralistic
young woman, one of those implacable American moralists whose .goodness. is a
terrible disease. When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic
failure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then she has been trying to
reform the men around her, even if that ultimately means destroying herself in
the process. With his unerring portraits of Lucy and her hapless, childlike
husband, Roy, Roth has created an uncompromising work of fictional realism, a
vision of provincial American piety, yearning, and discontent that is at once
pitiless and compassionate.

Read by Tanya Eby

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