CARTHAGE by Joyce Carol Oates

Finished Th 10/10/14

I had hoped to recommend this one to The Contemporary Books Club, but I didn't because it was almost five hundred pages (482). However, this is a true page-turner; it's a thriller/mystery that keeps you guessing until the very end. Well written character development on every person in the novel.

Set in the Adirondacks town of Carthage, NY

The Mayfield Family-
Zeno, Arlette, Juliet, Cressida

Corporal Brett Kincaid

Prof. Cornelius Hinton (The Investigator)

Hayley McSwain- Armed forces veteran who rescues Cressida on the night of the incident.
Sabbath McSwain (Cressida assumes Hayley's sister's identity. They look similar

What happens on the night that Cressida confronts Brett is never explicitly explained, but she most likely declared her love for Brett after he had dumped Juliet. He still loves Juliet, but doesn't feel that (because of his disability) is worthy of her love. What exactly happened to him is also left to the imagination. He might have been the victim of 'friendly fire' because he wanted to 'come clean' about some of the atrocities that he witnessed.

When Sabbath (Cressida) tours the death row at the Orion Maximum Security Correctional Facility for Men she is asked to sit in the execution chamber and she freaks. Although not stated explicitly, she begins to understand what she has done to Brett and leaves Florida and The Investigator.

Travels by bus back to Carthage. The Mayfields are no longer together. Arlette works for a women's shelter and Zeno is living in a condo. He has a relationship with Genevieve who he drinks with, and is still deeply in love with Arlette and his family.

Juliet has married a man twenty years her senior and has two young children.

Cressida has been gone six years and seven months.

Brett in imprisoned for involuntary manslaughter and actually admitted to many murders which probably he witnessed or participated in while he was in Iraq.

Juliet at first cannot forgive Cressida for ruining The Love Of Her Life. She feels that she would have married Brett despite his disabilities.

Cressida was befriended by Brett when she was bike riding when she was in a bad area of Carthage when she was fourteen. He helped her when she was run off the road by a driver. This was their secret.