Ariah Littrell is not blessed with great beauty or a sparkling personality. She is the good and worthy daughter of a Presbyterian minister and his wife, and is now approaching what is so cruelly called “old maidhood.” So it is with great relief to both families when Gilbert Erskine, also the child of a minister, also worthy and good, proposes marriage; after the wedding, a traditional honeymoon to Niagara Falls.
Thus Joyce ; after the wedding, a traditional honeymoon to Niagara Falls.
Thus Joyce Carol Oates, among the top literary lights in America, begins “The Falls,” a book so powerful and moving that the reader will be transported beyond the written words into the very lives of her characters.
The wedding night of Ariah and Gilbert Erskine is a nightmare, never to be spoken of again. When Ariah awakens in the morning, Gilbert is gone. With the management of the hotel, the police and a prominent attorney named Dirk Burnaby, she keeps a sad vigil by the Falls waiting for news. He surely met with an accident while fossil hunting. But the mournful widow, silent and aloof, knows better.
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