Bellefleur
Subtitle: The National Bestseller
By: [by] Joyce Carol Oates; Cover Art: Max Ginsburg.
Edition: First WB Printing ed. Sep '1981
Series: Warner Books Fiction: #96924 [$3.95]
Publisher: Warner Books: A Warner Communications Co.; this ed. publ. by arrngmt w/Elseier-Dutton Publ. Co.
Published: September 1981
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 686
ISBN-13: 9780446969246
Copyright date: 1980 by Joyce Carol Oates
Description: A wealthy and notorious clan, the Bellefleurs live in a region not unlike the Adirondacks, in an enormous mansion on the shores of mythic Lake Noir. They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken scratch.

Bellefleur traces the lives of several generations of this unusual family. At its center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious, somewhat psychic, very beautiful wife, Leah, their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities), and the servants and relatives, living and dead, who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look at the world's changeableness, time and eternity, space and soul, pride and physicality versus love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas, love and selflessness versus pride and selfishness. It is a novel of change, baffling complexity, mystery.
Notes: **Printed in the United States of America** 1976 WorldCat #987227346