Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four
remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the
inner lives of young Americans. As powerful and relevant today as
it on its initial publication, them chronicles the tumultuous lives
of a family living on the edge of ruin in the Detroit slums, from
the 1930s to the 1967 race riots. Praised by The Nation for her
“potent, life-gripping imagination,” Oates traces the aspirations
and struggles of Loretta Wendall, a dreamy young mother who is
filled with regret by the age of sixteen, and the subsequent
destinies of her children, Maureen and Jules, who must fight to
survive in a world of violence and danger.
Winner of the National Book Award, them is an enthralling novel
about love, class, race, and the inhumanity of urban life. It is,
raves The New York Times, “a superbly accomplished vision.”
Them is the third novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that
complete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights,
Expensive People, and Wonderland, are also available from the
Modern Library.