At the porter's announcement that station arrival is imminent, Catherine Land sheds her elegant red traveling clothes, rolling them into a ball and tossing them out the train window into a desolate bank of snow. She changes into a drab black dress that she's sewn herself. Her arrival in rural Wisconsin in the winter of 1907 launches Robert Goolrick's debut novel A Reliable Wife. Waiting at the train station to greet Catherine is Ralph Truitt, who has placed a newspaper advertisement seeking "a reliable wife."

Catherine is not the woman in the picture she sent to Ralph, which is just the beginning of her duplicitous behavior. The tension in this novel is palpable from the first few pages: Ralph has a dark and sordid history; Catherine has an agenda. Both are damaged goods. These facts are immediately known. What follows is a surprisingly intense page turner that is part dark gothic novel and part romance. The suspense is sustained through to the last page. Both Ralph and Catherine have dark and sometimes creepy secrets that are slowly revealed to one another. The story plays out in Ralph's remote estate, in the deepest part of winter, which somehow intensifies the eerie nature of the book. I found this book suspenseful, well-crafted and sometimes shocking. It definitely has a psychological edge that kept me thoroughly hooked. I contemplated many possible endings, but never the one presented by the author. I highly recommend A Reliable Wife. But beware: once you start it, you won't be putting it down until you've devoured the last sentence. ~Wendee