Detailed view for the Book: Bloodsmoor Romance, A

Title:

Bloodsmoor Romance, A
 

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Genres:

Historical
Romance

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# Date Publisher Binding Cover
1 1982-00-00 Dutton  

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Blurb: 
Joyce Carol Oates"s Bellefleur was hailed by critics as "a masterpiece" and "a gothic of major proportions." Now, here is her version of the nineteenth-century romance. Steeped in Victoriana and told by a demure, virgin narrator, A Bloodsmoor Romance is an ingenious blend of myth and history, humor and profundity, the sublime and the grotesque. It is a rich account of one family"s "ignominious" history and provides us with a singular vision of America"s formative years. It all begins when Miss Deirdre Zinn, adopted daughter of inventor John Quincy Zinn, is abducted in broad daylight by "an outlaw balloon of sinister black silken hue, manned by an unidentified pilot." Until this fateful episode, the Zinns were not unlike other families with five marriageable daughters who settled in the Bloodsmoor Valley of Pennsylvania. But as young Deirdre sails off to infamy, the Zinn family has already begun a process of transformation that is as multifarious as it is extreme. Constance Philippa is next to make her escape from the cloistered world of Bloodsmoor: she behaves scandalously on her wedding night, never to be seen again in quite the same shapely guise. Malvinia, seduced from her home by the lure of the stage, attains the heights of worldly acclaim -- and the amorous attentions of a dandy named Mark Twain. Octavia, the least rebellious of the sisters, finds her "reward" close to home; while Samantha, the "brainy" one, devotes herself to her father"s great work -- with unexpected consequences. In the world of A Bloodsmoor Romance, time machines run rampant, Transcendentalism gives way to the Spirit World, and decorum and etiquette fall to the exigencies of the passions. Amid yards of lace, sweet songs, and hope chests filled with twelve dozen of everything, the Zinn daughters -- and America -- are thrust headlong into the modern age. This is the tale our classics never dared reveal, the other side of Little Women as only Joyce Carol Oates can tell it.
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