''The Gravedigger's Daughter'' is a 2007 novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It is her 36th published novel. The novel was based on the life of Oates's grandmother, whose father, a gravedigger settled in rural America, injured his wife, threatened his daughter, and then committed suicide.Freeman, John.
"Joyce Carol Oates, up close and personal"

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

, 2007-08-11. Retrieved on 2008-10-28. Oates explained that she decided to write about her family only after her parents died (in 2000 and 2003), adding that her "family history was filled with pockets of silence. I had to do a lot of imagining."Crown, Sarah.
"The grandmother of invention"

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

, 2007-09-10. Retrieved on 2008-10-28. The novel was completed in the early 2000s but its publication was repeatedly bumped in favor of releasing new Oates novels "her American publisher believed were more 'controversial', such as '' Missing Mom''." The novel's epistolary epilogue was first published as a short story titled "The Cousins" in the July 2004 issue of '' Harper's Magazine'', and was anthologized in '' The Best American Short Stories of 2005'' and in Oates's 2006 collection '' High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories, 1966–2006''. ''The Gravedigger's Daughter'' was published on June 1, 2007, and debuted at #17 on the ''New York Times'' Best Seller list.Reese, Jennifer.
"Joyce Carol Oates gets personal"

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, 2007-07-13. The novel was a 2007 finalist for the

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

. In a secondary plot, Rebecca's parents escape from the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

s in 1936, foreseeing the oncoming

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

; Rebecca is born in the boat crossing over. When Rebecca is 13, her father, Jacob Schwart, who has lost his intellectual dreams and has become a gravedigger and cemetery caretaker in Milburn, abruptly kills her mother, Anna, and nearly kills Rebecca, before committing suicide. At the time of the footpath crossing, Rebecca is just weeks away from being beaten and almost killed by her own husband, the brutal Niles Tignor. She and her only son, Niles Jr., flee, and she becomes the woman for whom she has been recently mistaken, purposefully adopting the identity of Hazel Jones. Niles Jr. assumes the alias of Zacharias. As Hazel, Rebecca seeks many livelihoods, as alternately a waitress, clerk and finally, the mistress of the overwhelmingly wealthy heir of the Gallagher media fortune, a man in whom she never felt the need to confide her past.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gravediggers Daughter, The 2007 American novels Novels by Joyce Carol Oates Novels set in New York (state) Uxoricide in fiction Novels about serial killers Ecco Press books