On a clear winter night in upstate New York, two young men break into a house they believe is empty. It isn't, and within minutes an old woman is dead and the house is in flames. Soon after, the men are caught by the police. Across the county, a phone rings in a darkened bedroom, waking a pregnant woman. It's her husband. He wants her to know that he and his friend have gotten themselves into a little trouble. So Patty Dickerson's old life ends and a strange new one begins.
At once a love story and a portrait of a woman discovering her own strength, The Good Wife follows Patty through the twenty-eight years of her husband's incarceration, as she raises her son, navigates a system that has no place for her, and braves the scorn of her community.
Laural Merlington has a voice so big, so evocative that by the time she's read the title THE GOOD WIFE, we know we're in for trouble. Big trouble. And yet she doesn't overplay her role, as some voices do, putting as much emphasis on spilled soup as on spilled blood. The eponymous good wife is pregnant and has--you guessed it--a bad husband. O'Nan is justly famous as the master of a spare, compelling style. The gravel crunches under your tires. The wicked are banal; the good are tired and overworked. And Patty, our hero, is asleep on her waterbed when the phone rings. It's her husband, Tommy. He's been arrested. He tells her it'll be all right. B.H.C. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Stewart O'Nan's novels include Snow Angels, The Speed Queen, A Prayer for the Dying and The Night Country. Granta has named him one of the Twenty Best Young American Novelists. He lives in Connecticut.
