A wealthy and notorious clan the Bellefleurs live in a region not unlike the Adirondacks in
an enormous mansion on the shores of mythic Lake Noir. They own vast lands and profitable
businesses they employ their neighbors and they influence the government. A prolific and
eccentric group they include several millionaires a mass murderer a spiritual seeker who
climbs into the mountains looking for God a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken
scratch. Bellefleur traces the lives of several generations of this unusual family. At its
center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious somewhat psychic very beautiful wife Leah
their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities) and the servants and relatives
living and dead who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look
at the world's changeableness time and eternity space and soul pride and physicality versus
love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas love and selflessness versus pride
and selfishness. It is a novel of change baffling complexity mystery. Written with a
voluptuousness and startling immediacy that transcends Joyce Carol Oates's early works
Bellefleur is widely regarded as a masterwork?a feat of literary genius that forces us to ask
again how anyone can possibly write such books such absolutely convincing scenes rousing in
us again and again the familiar Oates effect the point of all her art: joyful terror
gradually ebbing toward wonder (John Gardner).
