num_pages: 512
description: Thornton Wilder’s renowned 1967 National Book Award–winning novel features a foreword by John Updike and an afterword by Tappan Wilder, who draws on such unique sources as Wilder’s unpublished letters, handwritten annotations in the margins of the book, and other illuminating documentary material.In 1962 and 1963, Thornton Wilder spent twenty months in hibernation, away from family and friends, in the town of Douglas, Arizona. While there, he launched The Eighth Day, a tale set in a mining town in southern Illinois about two families blasted apart by the apparent murder of one father by the other. The miraculous escape of the accused killer, John Ashley, on the eve of his execution and his flight to freedom triggers a powerful story tracing the fate of his and the victim’s wife and children.At once a murder mystery and a philosophical story, The Eighth Day is a “suspenseful and deeply moving” (New York Times) work of classic stature that has been hailed as a great American epic.
language: English
title: The Eighth Day
titlecomplete: The Eighth Day
characters: Breckenridge Lansing, John Ashley, Eustacia Lansing
genres: Classics, American, Mystery, Modern Classics, Novels, 20th Century, Literature, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 1634
places: Illinois
awards: awardedAt: -63129600000
name: National Book Award
category: Fiction
publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics