A riveting novel that explores the high price of successin the life of one woman, and her hold upon her self-identityin the face of personal and professional demons,from Joyce Carol Oates, author of the New York Timesbestseller A Widow's Story.
Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flatsof the Black Snake River. Cast aside, Mudgirl survives byan accident of fate—or destiny. Meredith "M.R." Neukirchenis the first woman president of an Ivy League university, butshe is confronted with challenges to her leadership which testher in ways she could not have anticipated. The fierce idealismand intelligence that delivered her from a more conventionallife in her upstate New York hometown now threaten to undoher. A reckless trip upstate will thrust M.R. into an unexpectedpsychic collision with Mudgirl and the life M.R. believes shehas left behind. A powerful exploration of the enduring claimsof the past, Mudwoman explores the tension between childhoodand adulthood, the real and the imagined, and the "public" and"private" in the life of a highly complex contemporary woman.
