My Heart Laid Bare

Written by Joyce Carol Oates

Narrated by Danny Campbell

New York Times Bestselling Author

Finally returned to print, a haunting gothic tale that illuminates the fortunes and misfortunes of a 19th-century immigrant family of confidence artists—a story of morality, duplicity, and retribution that explores the depths of human manipulation and vulnerability

“Oates . . . rarely falters throughout this epic. . . . An American tragedy.”—People

“My Heart Laid Bare shows Oates at her most playful, extravagant and inventive.”—The San Francisco Chronicle

The patriarch of the Licht family, Abraham has raised a brood of talented con artists, children molded in his image, and experts in The Game, his calling and philosophy of life. Traveling from one small town to the next across the continent, from the Northeast to the frontier West, they skillfully swindle unsuspecting victims, playing on their greed, lust, pride, and small-mindedness. Despite their success, Abraham cannot banish a past that haunts him: the ghost of his ancestor Sarah Licht, a former con woman who met with a gruesome fate.

As Abraham moves his family from town to town, involving them in more and more complex and impressive schemes, he finds himself caught between the specter of Sarah and the growing terrors of his present. As his carefully crafted lies and schemes begin to fracture and disintegrate before his eyes, Abraham discovers that the bond of family is as tenuous and treacherous as the tricks he perpetrates upon unsuspecting strangers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Apr 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9780063022461

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Reviews for My Heart Laid Bare

[laurajwryan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My Heart Laid Bare is a creation from an epic imagination—what a beautiful thing for a writer to enjoy, especially to use it to produce something so grand is a labor of love. Joyce Carol Oates is quite the creative dynamo—I’ve lost count of how many stories she’s written, and I have yet to buy let alone read all of them. One thing for sure, she loves words, she comes out to play with them; part of her process is becoming possessed by the story that she must tell—wringing out every last ounce of the tale tucked deep in the darkest corners of her mind. Writing like this is an exhausting and exhilarating process (not for the faint of heart) and at times can be the same exhausting and exhilarating experience for the reader. The books of the American Gothic Saga series never cease to amaze me with their complexity—they are larger than life stories chock full of larger than life characters—the head shaking unbelievable meshed with the head nodding believable. Abraham Licht’s family of My Heart Laid Bare is one of notorious distinction; seductive connivers, charming chameleons—they are perfectly flawed, blessed and damned—dichotomies of grotesque beauty—I could go on, but I will leave it at that—I don’t want to spoil it with details. As with any book from this series, it is best to approach these pages with an open mind and a sense of humor—for to take it too seriously (or literally) will only lead to vexation—the Gothics are unlike the rest of her fiction—yet where they diverge in their unique qualities, they complement each other too. This novel possesses a life of its own; the charisma of the characters makes this book so—evocative—macabre—dazzling—emotionally intense. Oh, I was sad to see it end. I love it for its lush writing style, daring to be gluttonous with its descriptions and it’s absolutely dripping with atmosphere—the American Gothic Sagas are my guilty pleasure. This book is the fourth out of five in the series—I’m glad there is one more left to read! The Accursed release date is March 2013…