Joyce Carol Oates

A young woman tumbles into a nightmare of decadent desire and corrupted innocence in a superb novella of suspense from National Book Award–winner Joyce Carol Oates. Art and arson, the poetry of D. H. Lawrence and pulp pornography, hero-worship and sexual debasement, totems and taboos mix and mutate into a startling, …

Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart is a 1990 novel by American novelist Joyce Carol Oates. The title is taken from "In the Desert," a poem by Stephen Crane. Oates's novel was nominated for best work of fiction in the 1990 National Book Awards.