The Stolen Marriage

August 14, 2017
Bestseller Chamberlain (Necessary Lies) conveys a strong sense of daily life in the American South during WWII, and the concurrent devastation of the polio epidemic, in this well-crafted crime-tinged tale of a marriage of convenience. Theresa “Tess” DeMello, a 23-year-old nurse-in-training, and Henry “Hank” Kraft meet via a chance encounter during an unchaperoned trip to Washington, D.C.; alcohol and bad decision-making result in Tess’s pregnancy and their subsequent wedding. Tess relocates from Baltimore to Hank’s hometown of Hickory, N.C., where his family owns a furniture factory. One morning, Tess agrees to drive her sister-in-law, Lucy, on an errand in an attempt to improve their strained relationship. Lucy hints at dark secrets in Henry’s life that Tess is not privy to, and requests a detour to deliver a mysterious envelope—a detour with fatal consequences. Details like Tess’s Catholic background, casual cultural biases, and the balance she strikes between independence and suppression of her own personality, in response to her husband and in-laws, enrich the story. Agent: Susan Ginsburg, Writers House.

August 1, 2017
A series of unfortunate errors consigns a Baltimore nurse to a loveless marriage in the South.It's 1943, and Tess, from Baltimore's Little Italy, is eagerly anticipating her upcoming nuptials. Her frustration grows, though, when her physician fiance, Vincent, accepts an extended out-of-town assignment to treat polio patients. On an impromptu excursion to Washington, D.C., Tess has too many martinis, resulting in a one-night stand with a chance acquaintance, a furniture manufacturer from North Carolina named Henry. Back in Baltimore, Tess' extreme Catholic guilt over her indiscretion is compounded by the discovery that she's pregnant. Eschewing a back-street abortion, she seeks out Henry in hopes of arranging child support--but to her shock, he proposes marriage instead. Once married to Henry and ensconced in his family mansion in Hickory, North Carolina, Tess gets a frosty reception from Henry's mother, Miss Ruth, and his sister, Lucy, not to mention the other ladies of Hickory, especially Violet, who thought she was Henry's fiancee. Tess' isolation worsens after Lucy dies in a freak car accident, and Tess, the driver, is blamed. Her only friends are the African-American servants of the household and an African-American medium who helps her make peace with a growing number of unquiet spirits, including her mother, who expired of shock over Tess' predicament, and Lucy, not to mention the baby, who did not make it to full term. The marriage is passionless but benign. Although Henry tries to be domineering, he always relents, letting Tess take the nurses' licensing exam and, later, go to work in Hickory's historic polio hospital. Strangely, despite the pregnancy's end, he refuses to divorce Tess. There are hints throughout that Henry has secrets; Lucy herself intimates as much shortly before her death. Once the polio hospital story takes over, the accident is largely forgotten, leading readers to suspect that Lucy's death was a convenient way of postponing crucial revelations about Henry. Things develop predictably until, suddenly and belatedly, the plot heats up in an unpredictable but also unconvincing way. An overly anodyne attempt at Southern gothic.

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September 1, 2017
Tess and Vinnie's plan to marry was as organic as Catholicism in Little Italythey grew up together, they fell in love. Despite WWII and numerous wedding postponements, the future looked good for their dream of working together as doctor and nurse. Until Tess visits the big city and makes a mistake: she gets drunk, loses her virginity to a stranger, and becomes pregnant. Instead of confessing to Vinnie (or her family), or risking a 1944-style abortion, she runs to Hickory, North Carolina, and marries the baby's father. WWII values aside, this novel is improbable on several levels. It partly redeems itself, however, by creating a realistic historical perspective on the polio epidemic (Vinnie's area of expertise) and on one heroic rural town famous for its polio hospital. Compelling details of patients' experiences, treatment of African Americans and of women, plus a tinge of mystery will all hold readers' interest in this veteran author's latest. Combines the issue-driven style of Jodi Picoult, the romantic tension of Nora Roberts, and the life-defining-mistake motif of Amy Hatvany's It Happens All the Time (2017).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

May 1, 2017

Following Pretending To Dance, New York Times best-selling author Chamberlain waltzes us down to early 1940s Hickory, NC, where Tess finds herself stuck in an airless marriage after impulsively breaking off her engagement to a longtime love. She finds purpose by working at the newly built polio hospital but knows that she is regarded with suspicion and starts sensing that her life is in danger.

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