Ralph Truit wanted a wife, a reliable wife. Stubbornly averse to frills or compromises, this successful businessman did what came naturally: He placed a small advertisement in a Chicago newspaper. Catherine Land, the woman who answered his classified ad, had an equally simple, though certainly more devious plan: She would marry Truit and eventually kill him. In Robert Goolrick’s first novel, set in the early 20th century Midwest, both these plans come awry in the course of quite human events. This subtle, passionate psychological novel snares and keeps your interest because its characters and our feelings about them change before our eyes. Readers will never forget what happens to the mail-order mates during their first harsh Wisconsin winter together.
