A Reliable Wife – By Robert Goolrick
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill $23.95
Set in a Wisconsin winter in the early 1900’s the novel traces three very different lives. One a powerful, older man who is bitter, lost and alone. He advertises for a “reliable wife” to be his companion. The woman who arrives is not what she appears to be. She’s his estranged son’s lover and has been sent to kill him. Thus begins a game of cat and mouse. The writing is suspenseful, dark and erotic. I could not put this book down. No one is quite what they appear to be in this astonishing novel.
