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Summary

Spanning roughly three decades from the Depression to the 1967 uprising, the novel traces the Wendall family - especially the daughter Maureen and son Jules - as they scrape through poverty, love, and violence in Detroit. Oates writes in a propulsive, naturalistic mode that lets private fates collide with the social pressures of class and race in a deindustrializing city. The book is one of the defining American novels about urban working-class life.