them

Loretta Wendell, her daughter Maureen, and her son Jules are "them"— three characters held to-gether by corroding hatred and mute love.

"Them" are also the forces that tear at their happiness — ignorance, intolerance, the loneliness of being a part and yet apart; the differences between rich and poor, white and black, the loved and the lover.

Through a complex field of time and space—Detroit and its environs between 1937 and 1967 — the three Wendalls experience their everydays in the midst of ominous history, trying by almost any means to cope with the "thems" they cannot understand, each seeking desperately to placate a driving restlessness with a freedom of abandon, to find his own identity, to define his unique, invulnerable self. From the Depression of the thirties to the violence of the sixties, Miss Oates penetrates the point of view of each character to show the impact of events upon him, the subtle relationships of each to the other, the innermost feelings and emotions that spur each to his own dream and action.

THEM is an extraordinary novel, a work that once again reveals Miss Oates's remarkable and compassionate insight, her true narrative skill, and her high artistry.