A Garden of Earthly Delights is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, published by Vanguard in 1967. Her second book published, it is the first of her series known as the "Wonderland Quartet". It was a finalist for the 1968 annual U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. A Garden sets out to explore social class in the United States and the inner lives of its youngsters. It follows heroine Clara Walpole, the beautiful daughter of a Kentucky-born migrant farmer. The novel explores Clara's ill-fated life and the four men who shaped it: Clara's father, a bitter, hard-working farm worker; Lowry, who whisks the teenage Clara away and tempts her with love; Revere, a wealthy married businessman who gives Clara stability; and Swan, Clara's son who carries the physiological burden of Clara’s determination to escape her haphazard existence of violence and poverty. In an attempt to rise above her mother's ambitions, Clara struggles for independence by way of her relationships with the four different men in her life. For a recent Modern Library edition of the novel, Oates revised three quarters of the original published text. Summary I. Carleton Carleton Walpole is a migrant worker, traveling with his family from camp to camp looking for work during the Great Depression. One day the truck breaks down, and as they wait for repairs his wife, Pearl, gives birth to a daughter whom they name Clara. Carleton is an arrogant, vain man who later kills a man by accident in a bar. The family moves to avoid the police. Pearl dies in childbirth a few years later, and Carleton takes up with a woman named Nancy. Clara goes to school, though she does not excel, and Carleton favors her out of all his children. One day when Clara is a teenager, she receives a visit from two women from the First Methodist Church in Florence. They invite her to a prayer meeting at their church that evening, which Clara accepts. The meeting at the church disturbs Clara, and she leaves early with a young man named LeRoy and they go to a restaurant. At the restaurant she meets another man named Lowry, and she goes home with Lowry, though he declines to sleep with her. When she comes back home that evening, Carleton begins to beat her. The next morning, Clara finds Lowry again and leaves town with him. Carleton sets out to