The Elder Statesman

A Reliable Wife
By Robert Goolrick
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Hardcover $24.95 

By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review

Having read his gloomy, disquieting, sometimes morbid memoir of his Southern childhood, “The End of the World As We Know It,” I should have expected Goolrick’s first novel would also be a dark tale, but I felt compelled to read it and was not disappointed in my thinking. It is a masterfully told story about a mail order bride, but don’t expect a “Sarah, Plain and Tall” story.

This debut novel set in 1907 in a Wisconsin village where Ralph Truitt, a 54-year-old business tycoon puts this ad in a newspaper: “Country businessman seeks reliable wife.

Compelled by practical, not romantic reasons.”

The book begins with Truitt waiting on a train platform for the arrival of Catherine Land, the plain woman who answered his ad. The beauty that steps off that train is far from plain bride that Truitt has ordered and she has her own idea in mind for the marriage. Both characters have different agendas and neither is about wedded bliss.

Catherine’s idea was for a quick marriage for money and a quick painless demise of Ralph.

Goolrick is so talented as a storyteller he literally forces the reader to turn the page for the next surprise. Both characters have hidden motives that Goolrick works deftly into the plot. Truitt is still grieving over the death of his daughter, his first wife who had an affair, and his son, who ran away. Catherine has her own dark secrets about her life before accepting Ralph’s marriage proposal and is plotting to slowly poison her husband and become a wealthy widow.

Even before the marriage, Ralph discovers she deceived him, but is obsessed by her beauty. After the wedding Catherine begins to poison him with small doses of arsenic, that sickens but he doesn’t kill him.

There were times in the story I wanted to chuck it aside but as a reader I had to know the outcome despite Goolrick playing a tug of war with the reader. Probably the most revealing part of the book is when Ralph sends Catherine to search for his estranged son. At this point the reader is blindsided by the way the story unfolds. Goolrick has written a weird psychological novel that builds to a strong and unexpected conclusion.

It is a suspenseful tale that is probably going to get a high rating on the Best Seller list but be forewarned it is a disturbing novel about love and despair. Columbia Pictures has bought the film rights, as if that is a surprise because neither of the two central characters have any redeeming qualities. It is raw emotion, but so was Goolrick’s memoir.

(Bill Duncan can be reached at bduncan@nrtoday.com or by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470.)

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