A Reliable Wife

By Robert Goolrick

Price:	$22.99
On Sale:	16/03/2009
Formats: Trade PB

Book Description

Set in a small Wisconsin farming and manufacturing town still crumbling a decade after the depression of the 1890s, A Reliable Wife tells the story of Ralph Truitt, a wealthy businessman who advertises for “a reliable wife” in newspapers across America. The woman he chooses, Catherine Land, describes herself as “a simple, honest woman,” but in truth she is both complex and devious— not the missionary’s daughter she claims to be in her letter to Truitt but a courtesan of great beauty, kept by men and haunted by a terrible past. Catherine’s plan in accepting the marriage offer is simple: she will win this man’s devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is the passion she finds in this seemingly solid, forthright man—a man who also harbours secrets and whose own past is far from pure.

Filled with remarkable characters and drenched with colour and atmosphere, A Reliable Wife is a story of love and madness, longing and murder, played out in a world that seems to have gone temporarily off its axis.

Author Extras

Robert Goolrick Biography

Critical Praise for A Reliable Wife

“Barbed and canny, with a sharp eye.”

— The New York Times on The End of the World as We Know It

“Searing. . . . [Goolrick is] a gifted writer with a memorable account of his terribly flawed family.”

— USA Today on The End of the World as We Know It

“Indelible. . . . A devastatingly shrewd no-nonsense description of mid-20th-century Southern mores and manners that can rank with the work of Walker Percy or Peter Taylor.”

— Newsweek on The End of the World as We Know It

“A devastating debut. . . . Worthy of William Styron and Flannery O’Connor.”

— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on The End of the World as We Know It

“Unnerving, elegantly crafted. . . .Morbidly funny.”

— Entertainment Weekly on The End of the World as We Know It

"...this darkly nuanced psychological tale builds to a strong and satisfying close."

— Publishers Weekly

“[T]he writing so mesmerizing it makes one wonder whether Goolrick practices; anyone who can turn a sentence fragment into poetry so well has to work at it. . . . Goolrick's unique tonality and his ability to convey complex emotions in elegant, spare language embed A Reliable Wife in your head.”

—CHICAGO SUN-TIMES (4 OUT OF 5)

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"A gothic tale that's as much psychological as it is plot driven . . . satisfying and surprising.”

— CHARLOTTE OBSERVER (4 OUT OF 5)

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“Debut novelist Robert Goolrick has managed a minor miracle. In the kind of precise, literary prose that breathes life into his complicated characters, Goolrick, author of an acclaimed memoir, has also managed a rousing historical potboiler, an organic mystery rooted in the real social ills of turn-of-the-century America...The result is a detailed exploration of love, despair, and the distance people can travel to reach each other that is as surprising, and as suspenseful, as any beach read.”

— Boston Globe

"Astonishing, complex, beautifully written, and brilliant. A Reliable Wife is a nearly forensic look at love in all its incarnations, with all its damages, deceptions, and obsessions, run through with points of light and pinned with ruinous truths."

— Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants

ISBN: 9781554685035; ISBN10: 1554685036; Imprint: ; On Sale: 16/03/2009; Format: Trade paperback; Trimsize: ; Pages: 304; $22.99; Ages: 1 and Up