From the author of Blonde The Falls & We Were the Mulvaneys this new novel takes in the themes of race immigration family & social mobility & is Joyce Carol Oates at her storytelling best. The Gravedigger s Daughter tells the tale of Rebecca Schwart born in the late 1930s to an immigrant family from Nazi Germany just as they are arriving to America. The family settles in a small bleak town in upstate New York where the only job the father can get is as the town gravedigger & caretaker of the cemetery. Soon the towns prejudice & the familys own emotional frailty results in unspeakable tragedy. In the wake of this loss & in an attempt to put her past behind her young Rebecca Schwart moves on across America & through a series of listless marriages in search of somewhere & someone to whom she can belong.