Date of Graduation
5-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFA)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
English
Advisor/Mentor
Bryan M. Hurt
Committee Member
Toni L. Jensen
Second Committee Member
Padma Viswanathan
Keywords
Blood; Bubbe; Levi
Abstract
As You Lay There in Your Blood is a novel consisting of six interconnected stories, as well as a novella. The novel follows Levi Sterne, a Jewish bodybuilder in rural Colorado, who deals with issues surrounding mental illness, family history, and the legacy of trauma. The novel explores themes of religion—particularly contemporary modes and forms of Judaism—as well as the relationships people develop from traumatic and difficult pasts. The novel follows Levi from his childhood and details the moment at which, at age 15, he’s abandoned by his mother. The stories then follow other important moments in Levi’s life, including his marriage and divorce, the birth of his daughter, and his eventual crime and prison sentence. Two of the stories also follow members of Levi’s family, namely his mother and his daughter, in order to follow the full path of the Sterne family. Each character in As You Lay There in Your Blood has a fraught relationship with the protagonist, Levi, and the novel demonstrates the lengths people will go to preserve their perceived connections with the people that they love. The novel is written primarily in first person, from Levi’s perspective, showcasing his voice and his perspective on the events of his life. The stories about his family are written in third person, which demonstrates the narrative distance explored in their connections to Levi. The novel also contains epigraphs which describe and demonstrate Levi’s states of mind at the beginning of each of the stories. By interlinking six stories and the novella, the novel shows, through its structure, the ways in which disparate and tangentially connected events can have physical and emotional ramifications even decades later.
Citation
Shulman, E. (2024). As You Lay There in Your Blood. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/5355