Carthage

A young girl’s disappearance rocks a community and a family, in this stirring examination of grief, faith, justice and the atrocities of war, the latest from literary legend Joyce Carol Oates. Zeno Mayfield’s daughter has disappeared into the night, gone missing in the wilds of the Adirondacks. But when the community of Carthage joins a father’s frantic search for the girl, they discover instead the unlikeliest of suspects – a decorated Iraq War veteran with close ties to the Mayfield family. As grisly evidence mounts against the troubled war hero, the family must wrestle with the possibility of having lost a daughter forever. CARTHAGE plunges us deep into the psyche of a wounded young Corporal, haunted by unspeakable acts of wartime aggression, while unraveling the story of a disaffected young girl whose exile from her family may have come long before her disappearance. Dark and riveting, CARTHAGE is a powerful addition to the Joyce Carol Oates canon, one that explores the human capacity for violence, love and forgiveness, and asks it it’s ever truly possible to come home again. The best of fiction and military themes come together in CARTHAGE by Joyce Carol Oates. This top-rated novel is a testament to her ability to create a narrative that is as compelling as it is thought-provoking. For fans of Bruce Mcallister (The Year's Best Science Fiction), Amor Towles (Table For Two), Stephen King (The Life of Chuck), Percival L. Everett (James), and Heidi Pitlor (The Best American Short Stories 2024).