Childhood cruelties handed down from Etta to Cecilia to Blythe bear out Cecilia’s ominous prediction: “One day, you’ll understand, Blythe. A tragedy soon after her marriage drives young Etta to her bed, while the care of her young daughter, Cecilia - Blythe’s mother - falls to Cecilia’s grandmother. Flashbacks throughout “The Push” provide glimpses of Blythe’s matrilineal history and its generational traumas, which date back to her grandmother, Etta, in the 1930s. “I had nothing when I met you, and you so effortlessly became my everything,” Blythe says, but she views with suspicion and trepidation his confidence in her as a mother. Meeting cute in college and married by 26, they support each other’s dreams (he’s an aspiring architect, she a fiction writer) yet see their relationship through very different lenses. Told in staccato bursts of memory and history illuminating the present, “The Push” details the courtship, marriage and undoing of Blythe and Fox Connor - the woman in the car and the man in the window. More importantly, the narrator has an overriding desire to set the record straight, evidenced by the manuscript she’s about to give the man: “my side of the story.” I imagine the warm, butter-yellow glow of your house turn to a hot, crackling red.” Loss, envy and retribution play out in the scene. The narrator’s longing - and something more dangerous - is palpable, especially when the wife lights candles nestled among the fir boughs on the mantel: “I let myself imagine, for a moment, watching those boughs go up in flames while you all sleep tonight. Through the picture window, she tracks the husband’s dance moves, the wife’s loving touch, the teenaged daughter and the young son in matching plaids. In the opening pages of her debut novel, “ The Push,” Ashley Audrain indelibly implants her narrator in the reader’s mind as the woman sits in her car, watching a happy family at Christmastime. RARE/SCARCE.If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores. Summary: 'Can a child be born evil? This disturbing question underlies the startling events of a new play, based on the best-selling novel by William March. Now protected by a mylar wrap and seller has cleaned the jacket up a bit. Original cast list and 2 production photos. Good/Acceptable Condition original Patty McCormack purple dust jacket.

Adapted from the original novel 'The Bad Seed' by William March. Extended Description and Notesīad Seed, a play by Maxwell Anderson.

1955 Dodd, Mead Fireside Theatre Book Club Edition.

Novel the bad seed