(Hachette, $38.99)Well, here’s something a little different. It’s 1907 in freezing cold, snow-covered Wisconsin and Ralph Pruitt is waiting at the train station for the simple, honest woman who answered his newspaper ad. on the train Catherine Land stares at herself in the mirror. Ralph is a wealthy, lonely businessman looking for a wife. Catherine is an impoverished beauty looking for a husband. Sound like a marriage made in heaven? Enter Ralph’s long-lost son, Catherine’s bitter and twisted lover, more tortured pasts than you can poke a stick at and a writer who knows exactly what he’s doing and hey presto, you have a bestseller on your hands.
As often reported with the internet dating scene today, folks back in 1907 were also telling fibs trying to snag themselves a good ‘un, although hopefully there’s a little less arsenic in the handbag now. Still, the message of pretending to be who you are not and only finding happiness when you reveal your true self, warts and all, is an enduring one.
Goolrick plays richly with language but never lets go of the plot, and it is the entrancing story of this soon-to-be couple that draws you in and doesn’t, for a minute, let you go. There’s intrigue, scandal, sex, lies, betrayal upon betrayal and ultimately, redemption. I couldn’t put it down, although it’s hard to know if it’s a mystery, a romance, or what.
Goolrick says he didn’t try to write a trashy novel, or a Great novel, capital G. He just wanted to make a good story that hangs in the mind. Catherine in the book says it’s a story of “people who had become trapped inside the bitter walls of memories they wished they never had
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
