A haunting new novel from Joyce Carol Oates Mudgirl is a child abandoned by her mother in the silty flats of the Black Snake River Cast aside Mudgirl survives by an accident of fate - or destiny Only when she is adopted by a Quaker family does she begin to suppress those painful memories Meredith M R Neukirchen is the first woman president of a prestigious Ivy League university whose commitment to her career and moral fervor are all-consuming But with an emergent political crisis and a prolonged secret love affair M R has to confront challenges to her professional leadership which test her in ways she could not have expected The fierce idealism and intelligence that delivered her from a more conventional life in her hometown now threaten to undo her When she makes a trip upstate M R Neukirchen is thrust into an unexpected psychic collision with Mudgirl and the life M R believes she has left behind A powerful exploration of the enduring claims of the past Mudwoman is at once a psychic ghost story and the heartbreaking portrait of an individual who breaks - but finds a way to heal herself.
