When She Was Good: A Novel

From “a giant of American literature” (The Atlantic), a funny and chilling novel, set in a small town in the 1940s Midwest, and its subject is the heart of a wounded and ferociously moralistic young woman, one of those implacable American moralists whose "goodness" is a terrible disease.

When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic failure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then she has been trying to reform the men around her, even if that ultimately means destroying hersel...