A Reliable Wife

Winter comes early to rural Wisconsin in 1907, and its bite is already in the air when Catherine Land arrives to become the "reliable wife" whom businessman and widower Ralph Truitt has advertised for. They both have their hidden motives--Catherine wants Ralph's riches; he wants her to facilitate a reconciliation with his estranged son. The surgical precision of Robert Goolrick's language lays bare the tangled threads of love, hate, revenge, and redemption in this debut novel. Mark Feuerstein's performance is spellbinding. His crisp delivery matches the staccato rhythm of Goolrick's declarative sentences. Further, he brings each character's unique voice to life with modulated tones that convey layers of personality and emotions. N.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

January 12, 2009
Set in 1907 Wisconsin, Goolrick's fiction debut (after a memoir, The End of the World as We Know It
) gets off to a slow, stylized start, but eventually generates some real suspense. When Catherine Land, who's survived a traumatic early life by using her wits and sexuality as weapons, happens on a newspaper ad from a well-to-do businessman in need of a “reliable wife,” she invents a plan to benefit from his riches and his need. Her new husband, Ralph Truitt, discovers she's deceived him the moment she arrives in his remote hometown. Driven by a complex mix of emotions and simple animal attraction, he marries her anyway. After the wedding, Catherine helps Ralph search for his estranged son and, despite growing misgivings, begins to poison him with small doses of arsenic. Ralph sickens but doesn't die, and their story unfolds in ways neither they nor the reader expect. This darkly nuanced psychological tale builds to a strong and satisfying close.