A car crash. A dead girl. And the Kennedys: A fictionalized retelling of a Camelot scandal by an American literary icon

Published in 1992 by E. P. Dutton
 
One minute you’re on cloud nine, flirting with the most powerful, respected, charismatic man you’ve ever met, and the next, you’re skidding off the road—hurtling violently into murky, rushing black water—fighting for your life as he abandons you with the sinking car. What would you be thinking? … Feeling? … Screaming? Joyce Carol Oates imagines just that in her short but stunning sleeper novella Black Water based on Senator Ted Kennedy and the Chippaquiddick scandal.


What begins as a starry-eyed chance encounter between 26-year-old Kelly Kelleher and The Senator quickly spirals into a nightmare: The Senator drunkenly crashes the car into the swamp and abandons Kelly to drown. As she suffocates alone, Kelly takes us on a psychotic autobiographical flashback of her life—her relationships, her fears, her hopes—while The Senator nonchalantly abandons her to her fate in the sinking car. It is a story told by a wide-eyed, eager young woman, but about a larger-than-life public figure who gets away with flippantly throwing away an innocent life. Black Water’s 160 short pages will chew you up and spit you out.

With a soft flick of her pen, Oates castigates two Republican presidents, chastises a Democratic dynasty, passes thinly-veiled judgment on a senatorial Goliath, and gives one “fictional” victim a timeless voice.

Joyce Carol Oates needs no introduction. One of America’s most respected contemporary writers, she published her first novel when she was 26-years-old and hasn’t stopped writing since. Oates has taught at Princeton University since 1978.

“Taut, powerfully imagined, and beautifully written, Black Water ranks with the best of … Joyce Carol Oates’s achievements. It can be read in a single afternoon … but it continues to haunt us.”
—NYTimes

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