Little Bird of Heaven

Oates' thirty-sixth novel grapples with familiar themes: the rocky underside of marriage, racial injustice, childhood trauma, sexual obsession, and the ways gender plays out among various subsets of the U.S. working classes. The story is set in fictitious Sparta, New York, a once thriving town seven-to-eight hours north of Manhattan. A former center of industry, the area was left high-and-dry when the factories that employed almost everyone relocated in the 1970s.