By Cos Barnes/Special to OutreachNC

At first I could not put down A Reliable Wife, capitivated by the author’s gothic tale, his good writing and great characters. I thought it was a typical story of a lonely man and his mail-order bride, but as the mystery and suspence built in the complicated plot, I found I was turned off by the brutality, deception and violence.

Set in 1907 in Wisconsin during a cruel midwestern winter – actually the snowy landscape is a character, too, – as Catherine frequently studies the cold environment, looking for answers to the questions she has found herself involved in.

Ralph Truitt, the wealthiest man in town and the boss of all the citizens, after 20 years of being alone, advertises, “Country businessman seeks reliable wife. Compelled by practical not romantic reasons. Discreet.”

Sending a picture of a less flamboyant relative, Catherine Land arrives at the train station, having shed her party dresses and sewed her jewelry in the hem of her dress, in plain clothing that befits a chaste spinster. She is greeted with Truitt’s statement, “This begins in a lie.”

From there the plot thickens. She has come equipped with a bottle of arsenic and a pact with another character to slowly kill Truitt and claim his wealth. Catherine has a past blacker than imaginable, a sad childhood and adolescence, and not much in the way of cheeriness or cleanness. Yet, the reader will be drawn to her as she saves Truitt’s life not once, but twice and undergoes a complete life change.

You will read of Truitt’s first wife, his daughter, and his son who may not be legitimately his. You’ll read of his parents and his mother’s obsession to do things right. But it is Catherine who is the star in this bizarre tale which may become a movie.