Review: A Reliable Wife, by Robert Goolrick

What motivates people to find each other, to join hands and try to travel the road together? While even the constant connection of technology can sometimes hide the truth of partners' true motivations, a century ago it was not uncommon for people to order spouses from catalogues, or to simply place an ad in newspapers around the country, and wait to see who showed up. Could you imagine agreeing to spend your life with someone that you only knew through a few letters, giving up your possessions, friends and locale, and moving across the country to find... who knew what, really? Would you be ready to deal with whatever you found?

Catherine Land and Ralph Truitt do just that in Goolrick's A Reliable Wife. Truitt, a wealthy, heartbroken, emotionally stunted widower, places an ad in a paper looking for a steady, sturdy partner, and he believes he has found one in Catherine, who professes to be the simple daughter of a missionary. Both have ulterior motives, and more baggage than any train could carry.

This is a great, great book, one that is difficult to put down. Just when I thought I had an idea of what was coming, the entire story would change tracks and go in a completely different direction! It was wonderful to read a novel that could surprise me, and be so beautifully written that I found the characters, ugly or pathetic as they were at times, redeeming and human and lush. Even the ending is immensely satisfying. Goolrick's uses of imagery and quiet, almost silent foreshadowing make the story extremely realistic and multi-dimensional while allowing the reader to discover the truths of these people in his or her own time, and to then realize that the path had of course been leading there all along.

Rating: five stars. Excellent, absorbing, mysterious read.