Fox

Joyce Carol Oates, born in 1938, is a notable American author whose writing career began with the publication of her short story collection By the North Gate in 1963. She has published plays, novellas, short stories, nonfiction, poetry, and novels. Fox (2025) is the 59th novel published under her own name, alongside 11 other novels published under the pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. Fox is a mystery that centers on the discovery of a man’s remains in the Wieland Nature Preserve in New Jersey. The man turns out to be Francis Fox, who taught at nearby Langhorne Academy, a prestigious boarding school. Many people may have wanted to kill Fox given that he was a sexual predator who targeted the middle school girls he was hired to teach. The narrative follows several characters and goes back and forth between the present and the preceding months leading up to the fatality; it then tracks the investigation by Detective Horace Zwender. The book purposefully uses a disjointed time frame to conceal the identity of the killer until the final pages of the book. 

Fox tackles subjects and themes that have been central throughout Oates’s career. In her early, much-anthologized short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1966), a 15-year-old girl is threatened by a grown man who arrives at her house while her parents are away and demands that she get in his car. Other works, including the novella Beasts (2001) and the novels Babysitter (2022) and Butcher (2023), examine how communities turn away from difficult truths and thus enable predatory behavior to continue. Oates has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize four times and won the National Book Award for her novel Them in 1970. She was presented with the National Humanities Medal in 2011. Oates taught at Princeton University for nearly 40 years, starting in 1978, and was a visiting professor at the University of California-Berkeley from 2016 until 2020. She published Fox at the age of 87.

This guide refers to the 2025 Hogarth first hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, illness, death, death by suicide, sexual violence and harassment, child sexual abuse, child abuse, emotional abuse, bullying, mental illness, suicidal ideation and self-harm, disordered eating, addiction, substance use, and cursing.

Plot Summary

Fox begins with a recollection from one of Francis Harlan Fox’s female targets, suggesting that their relationship will always exist. The narrative then shifts to recount three days in late October 2013. The location is the Wieland Wetlands Nature Preserve in New Jersey.

On October 29th, the headmistress of the prestigious Langhorne Academy walks her dog, who rushes off the trail into the wilderness and brings back a human tongue in its mouth. The next day, 13-year-old Eunice Pfenning and her father, Martin Pfenning, take a nature walk near Wieland Pond. Upon seeing a broken doll in the water, Eunice sobs, saying that she did a bad thing. Late the following evening, Demetrius Healy and his brother are working at the landfill adjacent to the preserve. In a ravine, they discover a wrecked car, and the driver’s body parts are strewn about. Vultures circle overhead. Initially, no one can tell if it’s an accident, suicide, or murder.

The narrative then reveals that a teacher named Mr. Fox, 41, has been drugging a student named Genevieve Chambers, 12, and coercing her into sexual relations in his locked office. Fox uses storybook language to describe his genitalia to distance himself from his actions. He swears Genevieve to secrecy. This has happened more than once, and Genevieve thinks she loves him. Earlier that term, Fox told another young girl, Mary Ann Healy, 13, that she was special. He invited her to his office, where he gave her a journal with a marble cover. 

In November, the white car in the ravine is linked to Fox. Detective Horace Zwender is put in charge of the investigation. He goes to see Headmistress Paige “P.” Cady to ask if the police can search Fox’s office. Worrying about the school’s reputation and her own, she says no and faints. The news of Fox’s demise reaches his students, and a devastated Genevieve also loses consciousness.

Meanwhile, Martin Pfenning has started to identify with the dead man, correlating his broken body with his own broken marriage. His troubled daughter has been avoiding him since their hike. He is surprised when his estranged wife, Kathryn, requests that he come over. There, Kathryn tells him that Eunice has said that he sexually touched her. Pfenning denies this and rushes to talk to his daughter, with Kathryn close behind. Eunice screams that she hates him, and a stricken Pfenning leaves. In a dreamlike flashback, Eunice reveals that she has also been coerced into performing sex acts for Fox.

Flashbacks reveal that Fox has been a sexual predator for his entire teaching career. At the Newell Johnson School, another prep school, he worked under the name Frank Harrison Farrell and was involved with a student named Miranda Myles. Miranda died by suicide, and her mother sued Farrell and the school. His lawyer got him off, with a year’s severance and good recommendations. Farrell legally changed his name to Francis Fox and vowed to never repeat his crime, but it’s clear that he did similar things at several schools before being hired at Langhorne.

Langhorne almost rejected Fox’s application, but he learned what would sway headmistress P. Cady to his favor through her niece Katy Cady. He flattered the headmistress, securing her influence with the board. Fox was disingenuous with Katy, leading her to believe that they might be a couple someday. Fox also embarked on a relationship with the school’s new librarian, Imogene Hood, telling her that they were soulmates. Under the cover of dating Imogene, Fox resumed his ways, beginning relationships with Genevieve and others. He developed his own website on the dark web to post sex acts with the drugged girls. After Fox’s death, Zwender finds his computer and the child sexual abuse material on it, leading him to conclude that this is why Fox died. The wreck was made to look like an accident but was actually a homicide.

Earlier in the term, both Mary Ann and Eunice became obsessed with Fox, and like Genevieve, they believed they were in love with him. Demetrius, who had been helping his father with custodial work at the school, noticed inappropriate exchanges between Fox and his students. Shortly before the murder, Demetrius witnessed Fox strike his cousin Mary Ann with his car. After confronting her, he realized that his suspicions about Fox were true. Later, Mary Ann showed up at Fox’s apartment to seduce him, but he rejected her. Soon after that, she flung herself out of his moving car and then limped away into the marsh. Fox was relieved when she didn’t return to school because he could then concentrate solely on Genevieve. However, just after the girl ate the drugged tart he had given her, they were interrupted, and she fled.

Zwender suspects the fathers of each of the main targets—Mary Ann, Eunice, and Genevieve—but this is a dead end. Blake Healy and David Chambers have little to do with their daughters’ lives, and Pfenning is only tangentially around due to the separation. Zwender then interviews Genevieve, who has recently returned home after a suicide attempt, but she will only tell him that she loves Fox. Showing her mother the videotapes only results in her denials.

Zwender is back at square one until another Langhorne teacher mentions that a large bust of Edgar Allan Poe is missing from Fox’s office. Zwender is sure that this is the murder weapon. He goes back to talk to Mary Ann’s mother, who reveals that Mary Ann was visited by Demetrius before she left town. Demetrius is called in for questioning and confesses to cleaning up the crime scene; he claims that he killed Fox because others abdicated their responsibility in stopping the pedophile. Zwender thinks that Demetrius is only partially telling the truth and doubts that he committed murder. Zwender chooses to let Demetrius go, telling him that he needs to live his life in love and not as a sacrifice. After closing the case and calling it an accident, Zwender tells P. Cady that Demetrius saved the school from disaster and persuades her to give him a job.

The book concludes with a memoir written by Eunice, who is now 22 and in college. Eunice explains her relationship with Fox and claims that she was in love with him. When he tried to distance himself from her, she said that she would kill herself. Rather than continuing his affection, he told Eunice that would be a good idea. Startled by his treatment, an enraged Eunice hit Fox with the bronze bust of Poe, killing him. Bloodied, she staggered to the hallway, where she saw Demetrius. He told her that he would clean it up and, after washing her of blood, sent her home. She concludes her narrative by stating that she still loves Fox. She reiterates his injunction to “never reveal [their] secret” (651), but the memoir shows that she’s done the opposite.