A Reliable Wife

Since Robert Goolrick's novel, "A Reliable Wife," is all about deception, readers can start off by not trusting the pretty, woodsy scene on the book's cover to depict the winter hidden inside these pages. Nor should you trust that the spouse in the novel is going to live up to the title. As it turns out, none of the book's main characters are reliable. And it's the labyrinthian twists and turns the reader must make to ferret out the truth that make this story such a fascinating read. 

 

 "A Reliable Wife" is a Gothic tale of lies, lust, unrequited passions, and murder. The backdrop for most of the story is a fictional rural community in Wisconsin — in the winter. The date is 1907/08 which places it firmly in the timeframe of "Wisconsin Death Trip," Michael Lesy's classic 1973 illustrated portrait of small-town life gone mad. Lesy peopled his book with a selection of photographic portraits produced by Chares Van Schaick between 1890 and 1910, along with newspaper accounts of ghastly murders, suicides, failures, foreclosures, fires and all manner of sad and tortured lives. Goolrick encapsulates the era in one brilliant sentence: "Every day there was some new tragedy, some new and inexplicable failure of the ordinary." 

We own three copies of "Death Trip," and my husband has used it as inspiration for paintings and woodcuts, so I instantly recognized it as the novel's subtext. Later, I discovered that Goolrick has been fascinated with the book — and owned a copy — for just about as long as us. You don't have to be familiar with "Death Trip" to enjoy Goolrick's book, but I must admit that having Van Schaick's images in mind makes the novel even richer. 

 

Goolrick lives in NYC but he clearly knows Wisconsin, and his depiction of it is spot on. I was captivated by his description of the winter landscape from the very first page where I read:

"It was not snowing yet, but it would be soon, a blizzard by the smell of it. The land lay covered already in trampled snow. The land here flew away from your eyes, gone into the black horizon without leaving one detail inside the eye. Stubble through the snow, sharp as razors. Crows picking at nothing. Black river, frigid oil."

 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The reliable wife of the title, Catherine Land, is a mail-order bride who comes to wed a wealthy businessman, Ralph Truitt, who's looking for companionship, not romance. He's had romance, passion and despair with his first wife and hopes to redeem himself by finding his son from that disastrous earlier marriage. It's a long time before we know what Catherine is looking for, where she's been and why she really answered Ralph's newspaper advertisement.

WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The book is complex and layered, revealing the story and the characters sometimes in tiny fragments, and others in shattering bomb-blasts. This is a story filled with sensuality, from the details of fashion and fabric to "foods that frightened Catherine with their beauty." With a different cover, you could sell the book as a bodice-ripper, it's so over-heated and over-wrought. Everything is overlaid with sex and longing. Though whether sex is pleasure or torture is rarely clear.

 

WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Though Goolrick doesn't give us many lovable characters or couples who form lasting bonds, he beautifully describes love and marriage, even as characters reject it:

"She had agreed to marry him without realizing that marriage brought a kind of simple pleasure, a pleasure in the continued company of another human being, the act of caring, of carrying with you the thought of someone else." 

WISCONSIN HISTORICAL  SOCIETY

"A Reliable Wife" is an almost perfect book. My only real criticism is from a Wisconsin gardener's viewpoint. The house Catherine comes to has a conservatory and a ruined secret garden. She begins to be interested in horticulture, and thus, there are numerous very specific references to flowers and plants. While this element of gardening and rebirth is important to the story, I found the specificity disruptive since no other elements were described in such detail. 

Frankly, I stopped dead in my tracks at least three or four times, and pulled reference books off the shelf to see if the plants mentioned — like Japanese painted fern — were really in cultivation in the U.S. in 1907. I did not find any information to the contrary but I've put down enough novels when the gardening part of the story was wrong, that I think I am overly sensitive on the subject.

 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

THE PHOTOS: These images are part of a collection of over 6,000 glass plate negatives created by Charles J. Van Schaick. Van Schaick learned the art of photography after moving to Jackson County, Wisconsin. In 1885, he opened a studio in Black River Falls, Wisconsin and served as the town photographer for over 50 years. His work includes both studio portraits and richly varied and intimate snapshots of small-town, Wisconsin life. A portion of his photographic work is represented in Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy. You can view some of those images on line at the Wisconsin Historical Society's flickr site.

People in the above photos are unidentified except for the studio portrait of deceased twin infants in coffins (directly above). They are Robert and Janet Fitzpatrick, born July 5, 1885, and died April 20, 1886, children of Robert and Martha Fitzpatrick.

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: While trying to learn if Goolrick was familiar with "Wisconsin Death Trip," I discovered he had written a memoir before the novel. It was on the shelf at my local library, so I grabbed it to take on a garden tour bus trip. I sat there absolutely engrossed in the memoir, "The End of the World As We Know It: Scenes from a Life." I raced through its 213 pages during the hours we were on the bus, finishing it shortly before we arrived at our hotel. 

Though "The End of the World" was laugh-out-loud funny in some parts, most of it was unutterably sad. Reading in the midst of gorgeous heartland farms and gardens — where I could take periodic breaks to absorb the life and beauty around me — may have been the only way I'd have made it through this book. Alcoholism is a prevalent force in the life of Goolrick and his family, and there were deeply disturbing scenes of attempted suicides. 

But I am glad that I managed to read those difficult parts, enabling me to understand Goolrick's story. It's a book that reminded me again how lucky I've been in my parents, my happy childhood, my whole life. A book like "The End of the World" paints a painful picture of what can happen when parents fail their children.

Comments

[Dreamybee]

These all sound very interesting. I love seeing old photos like these, makes me wonder when/why smiling in pictures finally came into vogue. Also, there is something to be said for being able to choose clothing that expresses who you are-the second picture, of the woman in the chair by the tree, strikes me as a shocking mismatch of person and clothing.

[African Beads]

really nice story to share ...
old pics really fascinates me.

[Julie Siegel]

It will not surprise you to know that this post was a trip down memory lane (with my photographer dad). I still recall that haunting picture of the Wisconsin Death Trip twins from my childhood. The Goolrich boooks are however quite new and appreciated, as until I went to one of Chicago's few remaining independent (and superior) Bookstores, Unabridged, I couldn't find anything good to read. Thanks!

[Rose]

I came over to see your GBBD post, Linda, and then got caught up in this excellent review. Sounds like a fascinating book, though I'm not fond of "bodice rippers." But from your review I sense it is much more than that.

I'm not surprised you have so few blooms with the weather we've had, but you have some gorgeous fall color! I'm still waiting for the leaves to turn, hoping they don't fall first:)

[Wendy]

I posted a much longer comment but didn't do the security step! grrr... long story short, sounds like my kind of book. Wonderful review! I'm going to pick it up.

[LINDA from EACH LITTLE WORLD]

I found it pretty fascinating, especially as I think he caught a moment in Wisconsin's past.

Julie, I think you will appreciate it knowing Death Trip as you do. Let me know what you think.

[Barbara H.]

Linda, you write such wonderful reviews. These sound like good candidates for winter reading. Thank you.

[LINDA from EACH LITTLE WORLD]

Thanks, Barbara. The first book review I did for the books page at the newspaper took me three weeks! This one probably took a few hours (plus finding and inserting the photos, which I think add a lot).

[Lauren Finley]

Thanks for the recommendation of the book, have to find a copy to read now. My mother brought home a copy of the Wisconcon Death Trip back in the 70's (I guess) when I was a teenager. I thought it was the most gruesome book but somehow so captivating at the same time...

[LINDA from EACH LITTLE WORLD]

Lauren — Gruesome but captivating is an apt description!