The Widow of Wall Street

February 6, 2017
Meyers (The Murderer’s Daughter) explores the dynamics of the 20th-century bedroom and boardroom in this novel. Phoebe and Jake meet in high school, quickly falling in love despite her mother’s concerns that Phoebe is moving too fast. As they move through college and the early years of their careers, Jake’s unbridled ambition brings wealth and comfort, but at a cost: Jake is needy and manipulative, demanding that Phoebe’s goals take a backseat from the very early days of their relationship. Unwilling to acknowledge his wife’s own ambition (to care for others, rather than earn a profit), Jake is blinded to all but the careful curation of a life he always dreamed of, making pawns of everything around him in order to do it. It’s only too late that Phoebe learns the brokerage and investment firm that she and Jake have been building for decades was little more than a con, landing him in prison and leaving her picking up the pieces of a life she’d thought was secure. Carefully written to gradually expose the emotional hold Jake builds over his wife, the novel is an engaging and sharp reflection of the rapid changes in marital dynamics over the course of the 20th century, as well as a cautionary tale about the dangers and allure of ambition in the heyday of Wall Street.