What I Lived for
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | Joyce Carol Oates |
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| Publisher | Plume Books |
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| At forty-two, Jerome Corcoran—“Corky” to his friends and associates—is by all appearances a successful real estate developer and broker, a city councilman with a promising future in local politics, a genuine ladies’ man, and all-around great guy. His big house, fifteen-hundred-dollar suits, and the ridiculously large tips he hands out all over town reassure him that he’s put plenty of distance between himself and the family history (which includes a murdered father and raving mad mother) he’d rather forget. Corky may think that his inauspicious beginnings on… | |
At forty-two, Jerome Corcoran—“Corky” to his friends and associates—is by all appearances a successful real estate developer and broker, a city councilman with a promising future in local politics, a genuine ladies’ man, and all-around great guy. His big house, fifteen-hundred-dollar suits, and the ridiculously large tips he hands out all over town reassure him that he’s put plenty of distance between himself and the family history (which includes a murdered father and raving mad mother) he’d rather forget. Corky may think that his inauspicious beginnings on Irish Hill, one of Union City’s shabbier neighborhoods, are now far behind him, but over the course of Memorial Day Weekend 1992, that precious illusion, along with several others, will be completely shattered. In the long list of Corky’s women, only one looms larger for him than his own appetites and self-interest: Thalia, his rebellious, radicalized step-daughter from his failed marriage. It is she who will become the agent of his undoing as a complex drama of corruption, blackmail, and political scandal climaxes in an act of explosive violence.
